CLAUSE FOR EFFECT
of the government’s draft MSE clause, Herrera said. More than 50 suppliers attended the event, which culminated in a draft supplier-government clause devel- oped in cooperation with the suppliers who attended. Working collaboratively with the supplier industrial base will contribute to more effectively initiating, executing and implementing the clause on future contracts, she noted.
SAFETY, PREVENTION AND DETECTION Te development of the MSE clause came out of ARDEC and JMC’s SQI, which began in 2006 “as a sub-integrated pro- cess team to the JOCG QA subgroup,” Patel
said. “Te intent was to look at
our requirements and engage in con- tinuous improvement activities based on impact and effort.”
Specifically, that meant assessing core requirements for quality at the Single Manager for Conventional Ammunition level, and deciding which requirements should undergo “continuous improve- ment activities to ensure that we have clean and stable requirements,” Patel said. Te first product to emerge from that initiative “was a single critical character- istics clause,” he said. “When it comes to safety, that jumped out as the number one criterion—that we should ensure that all requirements are clean and stable. We created a single critical characteristics clause for ammunition procurements.”
Te second outcome was the process capa- bility control and improvement clause,
“which addresses the prevention element of quality, or preventing defects from happening in the first place,” Patel said. (See “Process Capability, Control, and Improvement Clause Allows Enhanced Process Monitoring and Control,” Army AL&T magazine, January – March 2011, Page 66.)
134 TEST AND EVALUATION
Engineer Mike Menegus prepares equipment for testing at the Environmental Test Laboratory at Picatinny Arsenal, NJ. Inspection helps identify and reject nonconformities to ensure that only con- forming product goes to the warfighter. Testing determines how equipment will perform in various settings. The intent of the new MSE contract clause is to support a uniform, integrated approach to both for conventional ammunition suppliers. (U.S. Army photo)
Te MSE, the newest effort out of the SQI, addresses the detection of defects. “We addressed safety, then we addressed pre- vention,” Patel said, “Now we’re addressing the detection element, which is the inspec- tion process. So that’s the genesis of the project and the process we’ve been using with standard Lean Six Sigma [LSS] tools.”
Te idea behind the initiative is for pro- cess action teams to use the LSS tools to investigate and improve a defined work process, with the goal of improving cus- tomer satisfaction.
MSE AT WORK Besides the three current AIE clauses, cur- rent requirements documents include the military specifications MIL-A-70625, “Automated
Acceptance Inspection Equipment Design, Testing and Approval Army AL&T Magazine April–June 2014
of”; and MIL-A-48078, “Ammunition, Standard Quality Assurance Provisions, General Specification for.” According to Patel, having the applicable requirements referenced in one document, the MSE clause, will facilitate communication of requirements between government offi- cials and contractors, and will improve the first-pass yield of AIE submissions.
Tat means when a contractor says,
“Here’s our inspection equipment that we’re using to validate the critical and major characteristics,” they’ll get it right the first time. Contractors will know exactly what’s expected of them because they’re not switching between multiple variants of the same requirement.
Te MSE clause supports and reinforces the expectations of MIL-A-70625 and of
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