AAFES Expectations of Suppliers
By contract, AAFES suppliers are required to have developed
and maintain a quality program as referenced in Supplier
Requirements Agreement, Section I, General Provision,
Inspection/Quality Assurance:
"Contractor will maintain an in-process and
end-item quality control program to ensure shipments to AAFES do not include
defective/nonconforming items. AAFES reserves the right to review and evaluate the
program. Review and evaluation may include in-process inspections and initial pilot lot
inspections, as deemed appropriate, at contractor’s or subcontractor’s
facility."
Quality related clauses from AAFES Retail Business
Agreement are reproduced in the next section for ready reference.
The supplier objective should be to continuously provide
defect-free, quality products to AAFES. AAFES verifies this through it's inspection
programs. But inspections are costly to both the supplier and AAFES. If suppliers
maintained a system that could reliably assure no hazardous or defective product was
shipped to AAFES, verification inspection by AAFES would be largely unnecessary. The key
is to build the product right and continue to assure its quality by either a system that
reliably produces quality all the time or a system that reliably assures only first
quality product is shipped consistently.
There are excellent guidelines available for designing,
installing, and maintaining quality programs. We recommend guidelines published by the International
Organization for Standardization under a series of
standards called ISO 9000 listed as follows:
ANSI/ASQ Q9000-2000 (ISO9000-2000) Quality
Management Systems – Fundamentals and Vocabulary.
ANSI/ASQ Q9001-2000 (ISO 9001-2000) Quality
Management Systems - Requirements.
ANSI/ASQ Q9004-2000 (ISO 9004-2000) Quality
Management Systems – Guidelines for Performance Improvements.
These ISO 9000-2000 series standards promote the adoption
of a process approach when developing, implementing, and improving a quality management
system (QMS). The ISO 9000-2000 series Quality Management Standards are based on eight
quality management principles as follows:
Principle 1 - Customer
Focus. Organizations depend on their customers and therefore
should understand current and future customer needs, should meet customer requirements and
strive to exceed customer expectations.
Principle 2 - Leadership.
Leaders establish unity of purpose and direction of the organization.
They should create and maintain the internal environment in which people can become fully
involved in achieving the organization's objectives.
Principle 3 - Involvement
of People. People at all levels are the essence of an
organization and their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the
organization's benefit.
Principle 4 - Process
Approach. A desired result is achieved more efficiently when
activities and related resources are managed as a process.
Principle 5 - System
Approach to Management. Identifying, understanding and
managing interrelated processes as a system contributes to the organization's
effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its objectives.
Principle 6 - Continual
Improvement. Continual improvement of the organization's
overall performance should be a permanent objective of the organization.
Principle 7 - Factual
Approach to Management. Effective decisions are based on the
analysis of data and information.
Principle 8 - Mutually
Beneficial Supplier Relationships. An organization and its
suppliers are interdependent and a mutually beneficial relationship enhances the ability
of both to create value.
Copies of these standards are available from the American Society for Quality (ASQ),
address and phone number of which are in the useful llinks page.
An integral part of a quality program is capturing and
analyzing cost of quality data. When properly documented and analyzed, cost of quality
data can be powerful management tool for effecting quality improvement. Quality cost
information can be one of the most significant measurement and administrative tools in the management and control of a business,
and can be extremely useful in assessing the effectiveness of a company’s production
and quality systems. Quality costs are simply those costs related to quality, which are
broadly divided into those arising from internal operations and external activities. The
Quality Cost Committee of the American Society for Quality recommends breaking down
quality costs into the following four areas:
Prevention costs. Those costs
associated with efforts to prevent failures or defective products. The costs associated
with personnel engaged in designing, implementing, and maintaining quality system.
Maintaining the quality system includes auditing the system.
Appraisal costs. The costs
associated with the measuring, evaluating, or auditing of products, components, and
purchased materials to assure conformance with quality standards and performance
requirements.
Internal failure costs. The costs
associated with defective products, components, and materials that fail to meet quality
requirements prior to shipment and result in loss, e.g. rework, retest, scrap,
reprocessing, reperforming a service, etc.
External failure costs. The costs
generated when defective products are shipped to customer, e.g. warranties and returns,
allowances, product recalls, liability, etc.
Quality costs can be reported in a variety of ways, e.g., %
of labor cost (direct or indirect), % of sales, % of raw materials costs, etc.
AAFES expects its suppliers to capture and analyze cost of
quality data as a management tool in effecting quality improvement.
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Reducing
Costs