Best Practices

Commercial Quality Assurance Practices Offer Improvements for DOD Gao ID: NSIAD-96-162 August 26, 1996

The Defense Department (DOD) spends about $1.5 billion extra per year on military-unique quality assurance requirements for major acquisitions. It spends billions more on cost and schedule overruns to correct problems caused by poor quality practices. To help improve DOD's quality assurance program, GAO reviewed world-class commercial organizations to determine what practices they had adopted to more efficiently produce quality products. This report describes (1) the problems DOD has had historically in improving quality assurance practices, (2) some private sector practices that could benefit DOD, and (3) a current plan for improving quality assurance activities.

GAO found that: (1) DOD spends more than $1.5 billion annually to support its quality assurance activities; (2) manufacturing and quality problems have contributed to cost and schedule overruns on DOD weapons systems programs; (3) DOD acquisition programs have experienced quality problems during the production phase due to incomplete weapon designs; (4) DOD is relying on unstable designs and inspections to rework the defects in its B-2 bomber and C-17 Airlifter programs; (5) a number of successful commercial manufacturers are improving the quality of their products, while reducing their oversight and inspection costs; (6) commercial manufacturers have broadened their definition of quality assurance, by changing it from a postmanufacturing step done at the end of each process to being part of the process itself; (7) DOD began in the early 1990s to implement a method of moving away from inspection-oriented quality assurance practices and toward process control; (8) DOD is developing a plan to reduce the costs of redundant quality assurance processes; (9) the plan will allow DOD contractors to use a single quality management system based on process controls for all DOD contracts; and (10) DOD could enhance its quality management system by encouraging defense contractors to use more advanced commercial techniques and quality assurance practices.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone:


The Justia Government Accountability Office site republishes public reports retrieved from the U.S. GAO These reports should not be considered official, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Justia.