The Navy's Best Practices Approach to Reliability and Quality

Abstract

For the first time in recent history, the US Army, Navy, and Air Force are in fundamental agreement on the priority of reliability in their weapon system requirements. Even more significant is mutual recognition that reliability is achieved not by setting numerical requirements and testing for compliance, but by focusing on the fundamentals of design and manufacturing; and that quality is achieved not by counting defects but by eliminating their causes. These lessons, long in coming to the Department of Defense and its contractors, are now beginning to be implemented in the acquisition or upgrading of most weapon systems. A major impetus to implementation was the 1982-83 work of the Defense Science Board Task Force on the Transition from Development to Production, which led to DoD Directive 4245.7, its companion DoD Manual 4245.7-M, and Department of Defense Advocacy. Each service is taking a somewhat different approach to the implementation of these similar new initiatives. The purpose of this paper is to outline the Navy's approach, for comparison with the initiatives of the other services.