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Achieving Quality

Introduction

The MOD's acquisition community is striving to acquire Defence capability faster, cheaper, better and more effectively through the “Smart Acquisition” initiative. Therefore quality management has been, and will remain, a key feature of defence acquisition. For more information, view the top level Quality Management process flowchart External link to Ministry of Defence Intranet content available on the Project Governance Team’s website on the Defence Intranet.

Policy

Although Integrated Project Team Leaders (IPTLs) are responsible for the quality of the product they acquire, contractors are totally responsible for the quality of the product they deliver, and are required to maintain adequate control of their suppliers. This responsibility extends to all levels of subcontractor, including those overseas.

The MOD expects its contractors to have an appropriately certificated Quality Management System; therefore the MOD operates an Appropriate Certification policy. Provided contractors apply their certificated systems to contracts placed by MOD, the MOD should be able to have confidence in its contractors' performance and the quality of the products that they deliver.

Key activities

Key activities that support the achievement of quality in acquired products include:

Controlling internal processes.
Defining a strategy and implementing a plan for achieving quality.
Selecting suppliers that have an appropriate management system certification for the scope of the required contract activities.
Ensuring that contractual requirements and product acceptance criteria are clearly defined, measurable [341KB PDF] and achievable.
Have a strategy that will mitigate supplier and/or product related risk. Consider tasking MOD Government Quality Assurance Representative organisations to carry out Government Quality Assurance Surveillance to assist in the risk mitigation process.
Revisit achievements against what you originally planned; consider the extent to which the original requirements have been met. Recognise the successes and opportunities for improvement and feed good practices into future requirements.

PDCA or Deming cycle

Diagram of the Plan, Do, Check, Act or Deming cycle. A textual description of this image is contained in the following paragraphs.

The foregoing is based upon "Plan-Do-Check-Act" (known as the PDCA or Deming cycle); that underpins good quality management:

Plan - Decide what to do and identify how you will know if it has worked.
Do - Do what you planned to do and measure it as planned.
Check - Check the results against expectations.
Act - Hold the gains and learn from experience.

Change History

1 September 2009: Key activities amended to include "measurable" contractual requirements.