DCMC ISO qualification

Hughes Space and Communications Company (HSC) has a customer base encompassing both DoD and NASA, in addition to domestic and international commercial and quasi-governmental organizations. The Defense Contract Management Command (DCMC) represents many of the military/NASA customers. Their on-site presence and contractual oversite responsibility affords them profound knowledge of HSC processes with a specific focus on the Quality Management System. Implementation of ISO 9000 has been the subject of the Joint Government/Industry Quality Liaison Panel with the following results: a contractors established quality system should be utilized (as opposed to specifying ISQ 900X directly). The contractors system should be “based upon” the applicable ISO 900X standard. The DoD and NASA will rely upon a streamlining of existing contractor oversite techniques, in lieu of requiring third party registration to ISO 9000. Accordingly, DCMC established methodology (pioneered by DCMC Phoenix at Motorola) to assess contractor quality systems and to “qualify” the contractor as an ISO 900X DoD contractor