The Logistics Management Division for NASA includes the Wallops Island Facility, Goddard Space Flight Center, and NASA Headquarters. It has four branches, 50 civilian servants, and 225 contractor personnel. The division has 12,000 Civil Service and contractor personnel. The flight project support operations are ISO 9001 certified, with the processes fully documented. For the institutional support services, the processes are documented in Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). The goal was to be certified by August, 1999.
The Logistics Management Division for NASA includes the Wallops Island Facility, Goddard Space Flight Center, and NASA Headquarters. It has four branches, 50 civilian servants, and 225 contractor personnel. The division has 12,000 Civil Service and contractor personnel. The flight project support operations are ISO 9001 certified, with the processes fully documented. For the institutional support services, the processes are documented in Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). The goal was to be certified by August, 1999.
The Institutional Base Support Services include:
- Center mail services
- Records and directives management
- Motor pool and fleet motor vehicle maintenance and operations
- Transportation and pickup delivery services
- Center taxi and shuttle bus services
- Office supplies- JIT next day delivery
- Office moves
- Property accountability and utilization
- Central receiving and packing
- Supplies and materials purchasing
- Export control
- Travel services
Goddard Space Flight Center used a Quality Management System (QMS) to control ISO product development to be complaint with the ISO 9001 Standards and NASA policy. In early 1998, the director appointed representatives from the ten directorates to serve on a QMS Council to plan, develop and implement the QMS. The scope of the project included all products developed from the core process and included:
- Science enabling
- Technology development
- Systems development
- Program/project management
- Dissemination of knowledge, research
The Logistics Management Division then developed a web-based system as the repository and configuration control tool for the QMS documents that included the directives and required procedures and guidelines along with the work instructions for the different divisions and branch levels.
The Quality Management System documentation is a centralized configuration management system for flight programs, project plans, technical documents and engineering drawings. There is a Non-Conformance Reporting System to report and track non-conformances for root cause, corrective action, follow-up, and closure providing a historical record for management analysis. There is also an audit system for scheduling and tracking internal audits of organizations and processes for compliance. This is a requirement for certification.
Logistics challenges for flight projects and flight instrument development included insufficient planning lead times and duplication of effort between the project offices and the functional support offices. The QMS provides a comprehensive framework for ensuring logistics planning and insertion. The logistics operations goal is to continually improve processes and customer service.
White said that the QMS implementation was a complex and labor-intensive effort that required massive documentation and took two years. It was difficult to implement changes in this large, decentralized, multi-functional organization. Some of the contractors had been working there for 30 years and there was resistance to change. The employees and contractors had to adopt new, written processes based on ISO standards. The internal audit program’s nonconformance reporting helped management to target specific areas needing attention.
The benefits to Goddard for the new certification include:
- Careful insertion of logistics elements into the QMS policies and procedures ensure support approaches that are faster, better, and cheaper
- Processes have been standardized and discipline enforced
- Duplication of functions and resources across the organization have been identified and reduced
- Products and services both for internal and external customers are higher quality
- Certification is internationally recognized as a valued business pedigree
