conformance specification in procurement conformance specification in procurement

However, Verifiability is related to the previous characteristic of the requirement being "Unambiguous". 4M%m8Kxq@D0P- E62e(S4O#?s3,!Ms%iTZa5 @!.MOzNRU!+9nI Good thoughts Diaa..Performance specifications focuses on supplier partnership. The buyer uses the results of the testing to verify that a seller provides a product that conforms to the specification and meet procurement requirements. The developers might respond that those were not part of the requirements and this would be scope creep to the project. There is sometimes confusion between the two terms, however, in most cases, these two terms mean exactly the same thing and often comes down to the personal preference of the company that needs the certificate. However, this is generally impossible for implementations of nontrivial specifications that are written in a natural language. It, in turn, refers to other parts of the specification for details. 0000003290 00000 n What does it mean to have a conformance clause? Departments using design Provide the date(s) and place when the product was tested for compliance with the consumer product safety rule(s) cited above: Provide the location(s) of the testing and the date(s) of the test(s) or test report(s) on which certification is being based. this would be prohibitive. Conformance is usually defined as testing to see if an implementation faithfully meets the requirements of a standard or specification. Also, what is the difference between conformance specification and performance specification? My company Sofeast, can probably help you. What are the types of specification in procurement? By signing the DoC you takefull responsibilityfor your products compliance with the applicable EU law. "functional" and "performance" are used << When expanded it provides a list of search options that will switch the search inputs to match the current selection. Well also examine in more detail the type of CoC you need to import consumer and electronic products into the USA and EU, as well as covering some other points on the topic, too. performance specifications afford the manufacturer or bidder Three of the test suites that are being developed are: XML Test Suite - The XML test suite for XML processors contains over 2000 test files and an associated test report. The CoC is sometimes called Certificate of Conformance or Certificate of Compliance. specification sets limits and thereby eliminates, or potentially 0000009860 00000 n Acceptance/rejection of such item needed will be according to the performance stated in the specification With performance specs, it will take more time for the procurement process as you may get totally different proposals and you need to discuss and validate them internally; however it opens the door for innovation as suppliers are free to suggest any workable solution which may improve functionality, cost & to be more sustainable option it's very suitable in case requesting department is not very well established so that you will be depending on suppliers' experience. This is costly because much work may have already been done which did not take into consideration and may exclude meeting the later requirements. developing your specifications, however, Procurement does not The supplier has to supply this, even though the supplier may not know what the product is for. predicated on a written specification which includes certain Another alternative is the requirement that [1] Gartner Group, a Stamford, CT based consulting company, [2] ISO/IEC Guide 2:1996, Standardization and Related Activities General Vocabulary, Webmaster | Contact Us | Our Other Offices, Created September 8, 2010, Updated August 25, 2016, Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP). Typically, the sponsor establishes and maintains the program. For example, Apple maintains a page about EU compliance, and here is one of their DoCs. Hit the button below: Filed Under: Certifications Tagged With: certificate of conformity, coc, critical products, customs, high risk products, product conformity, standards. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------, Lisa J. Carnahan National Institute of Standards and Technology Information Technology Gaithersburg, Md. Ideally, we would like to be able to prove beyond any doubt that an implementation is correct, consistent, and complete with respect to its specification. These assertions are statements of functionality or behavior derived from the standard, and which are true for conforming implementations. All Goods provided by Contractor to Company shall conform to Company's applicable specifications, drawings, samples or other descriptions. Although the terms validation and conformance testing are often interchanged, they are not the same. Conformance means that a product meets the minimum requirements in the standard. A reference implementation is an implementation of a standard that is by definition conformant to that standard. https://www.nist.gov/itl/ssd/information-systems-group/conformance-testing, Martha Gray, Alan Goldfine, Lynne Rosenthal, Lisa Carnahan National Institute of Standards and Technology. Lock In other cases, batch CoC would be good enough. Usually testing programs are initiated for those specifications or standards for critical applications, for interoperability with other applications, and/or for security of the systems. specifications; brand-name-or-equal specifications; design specification is to provide a basis for obtaining a good or You must translate the EU declaration of conformity into the language or languages required by the EU country in which your product is sold. characteristic of equipment, materials and supplies. Therefore, the list of assertions should be as comprehensive as possible. Conformance and Performance Specifications 1. Project Managers, in the pursuit of successful project management and to provide a timely, cost effective, quality service to their clients, may acquire personnel, goods and services during project execution; or personnel and services may be acquired by others, both within or outside the organization, to provide service in their specialty areas. Thus, quality of conformance equates to conformance to specifications within an acceptable tolerance range. and more interested in what a product does. Well explain what a CoC is, what its used for, and what it includes. In 1991, ISO/IEC DIS 10641 defined conformance testing as "test to evaluate the adherence or non-adherence of a candidate implementation to a standard." 2) Actions - related to things such as functions, processes,. PFi@("$0 (JDbyHA': F$%BIPAl4FP'aFYlO2f)m8c4&3 o7q$e9(#yd: Tip - The purchase specification is to allow purchasing to seek competitive quotations by forwarding the purchase specification to prospective suppliers. However, this is generally impossible for implementations of nontrivial specifications. b. Please tell me by leaving a comment. by vendors to add products to the QPL. required, testing methods, and characteristics that the When there is enough time to assess the functionality of the product as proposed, Confirm Sign Up via the Email you provided, Get WEEKLY updates on Business, Finance & Legal aspects, Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), CIPS L5M4 Advanced Contract and Financial Management, CIPS LEVEL 3 ADVANCED CERTIFICATE IN PROCUREMENT AND SUPPLY OPERATIONS, Cips level 4 DIPLOMA IN PROCUREMENT AND SUPPLY, Legal aspects in entrepreneurship (Mini EBook), Pricing arrangements in commercial agreements, Proposing solutions to customers problems, WELCOME TO THE ZERITE NETWORK TAX TRAINING PROGRAM, The efficacy of specifications does not depend on technical knowledge of the buyer, Supplier can use their creativity to develop the products. To this end, The following are illustrative examples. A certificate issuing organization is responsible for issuing certificates for products determined to be conformant. Alternatively, the Java test suite can be downloaded and run locally. 0000010532 00000 n DEFINITIONS 2.1 Centroidal Area. a. 0000066307 00000 n The suite may be a set of programs, a set of instructions for manual action, or another appropriate alternative. Thanks! (a) Special marking as required under the applicable Military Specification [e.g. It increases a buyer's confidence in a product and its ability to meet their needs. The testing program should strive to be as impartial and objective as possible, i.e., to remove subjectivity of both the procedures and the testing tools. 0000045027 00000 n requirements. Definitions - what is conformance (to a standard)? Conformance Clause Every specification SHALL contain a conformance clause. If the criteria or requirements for conformance are not specified, there can be no conformance testing. >> Conformance to specification means to meet the regulatory requirements; Customer needs means to meet the customer reasonable specific requirements. Dr. W. Edwards Deming is often linked with approaches to improvement that carry labels such as TQM, Six Sigma, and Lean. It should be possible to know by observation of the finished system/product that the requirement has been met. Determining whether a product faithfully implements a standard or specification is essential to creating robust, interoperable solutions. Sensor installation and measurement location specifications, performance and equipment specifications, test procedures, and data reduction procedures are included in this specification. I like the point about cost only .. 0000002922 00000 n The conformance clause may specify sets of functions, which may take the form of profiles, levels, or other structures. The decision to issue a certificate is based on the testing results and established criteria for issuing certificates. looking at the above simple example that both requisitions are asking for something (A utensil to eat with) but they are defining vastly different attributes. Not all specifications or standards need a testing program. For NIST's participation in XML/DOM conformance testing, see "XML-Based Technologies. Proprietary Specification. Conformance test suites increases the probability that software products that claim to conform to a specification are implemented correctly. The test suite should be platform independent, and should generate repeatable results. When you get into a Commercial agreement (contract), you are simply intending that the law enforce whatever it is that you as a party in that contract desire. specification, having been used historically in public Taking the time to think, write & challenge what your internal customer need is one of the most important keys to have efficient, smooth, transparent & successful procurement process. manufacturers' names, brand names and model numbers, but it is A defect can lead to a failure that might result in loss of life. But what are specifications? 0000009883 00000 n What we wrote above is based only on our understanding of the regulatory requirements. What are the types of specifications when contracting? QualityInspection.org does not present this information as a basis for you to make decisions, and we do not accept any liability if you do so. Performance purchasing is results orientated in terms controlled conditions and assessments made of their performance 0000066460 00000 n Procurement is responsible for final editing of criteria for the purpose of qualifying the bid document. Purchase Requisition 1 - A poor undetailed specification "I want something to eat my dinner with". both product and price competition requires that specifications It is important to note that certification cannot exist without validation, but validation can exist without certification. the sealed bidding terminology as used throughout these specifications is synonymous with their negotiated procurement counterpart unless specifically stated otherwise. (IUT) is the object that is being tested for conformance. Quality of conformance is the ability of a product, service, or process to meet its design specifications. Several of the W3C Working Groups have developed conformance test suites or tools e.g., SVG, CSS, and HTML. If errors are found, one can correctly deduce that the implementation does not conform to the specification; however, the absence of errors does not necessarily imply the converse. Generally, the more critical the application, the more formal the testing. Official websites use .gov There are two types of specifications, Design and Performance. Reference method tests and PEMS drift tests are conducted to determine conformance of the PEMS with the specification. The responsible party has the option to use the certification procedure in place of the SDoC procedure. Thus, the tests when executed on the implementation under test will generate a pass/fail condition. Each test should lend itself to providing objective, reproducible, unambiguous, and accurate results. In such a case, the conformance clause should specify whether or not an implementation is considered to be conformant if it does not implement each approach? Though there are so many things that make a good well rounded specification im going to narrow it down to 4 simple factors; There should be only one way to interpret the requirements of the customer. Paper combination is: 3 layers carton (Layer1 is Kraft liner of 125GSM + Layer2 is Test/Recycled liner of 100GSM + Layer3 is Kraft liner of 125GSM) with mentioning Flute type and total GSM. The meaning of the words "shall," "should," and "may," in the context of the given standard, could be defined in the conformance clause or be as defined by organizations such as ISO. In many of these cases the problem is not that the scope changed but that the original Specification was incomplete. qualified product list (QPL) is a specification based on A conformance clause is a section of a specification that states all the requirements or criteria that must be satisfied to claim conformance to the specification. means of attempting to satisfy the requirement, its use If bids could depart from the specification, the result would be the defeat of competition and a contract in which there was no competitive bidding. It also provides an independent, objective method for evaluating similar products and ensuring that software customers are not locked into purchasing a software product from a single vendor. sound evaluation criteria. 5. Lock Does a KitchenAid have a juicer attachment? The CoC can either be requested by a buyer to ensure the product being manufactured has been tested and passes the set criteria within a specification and meets both technical and safety requirements,or it would be a mandatory requirement as stated by country regulations and law for certain products, such as Bluetooth devices being sold in the USA. The conformance clause identifies what must conform and how conformance can be met. Requisition 1 provides the buyer with much more scope and freedom (you didn't want chopsticks then?). Without a CoC, products may be impounded, confiscated, and in some case destroyed. compliance with specifications, and (4) provide for an equitable These criteria may or may not require implementations to pass 100% of the specifications. Its use will not be permitted unless only one the methods for establishing and maintaining a QPL varies widely There are many types of testing including testing for performance, robustness, behavior, functions and interoperability. It is the basis of all offers and therefore the foundation for a contract. It is well recognized that conformance testing is a way to ensure that "standard-based" products are implemented. On the one hand, a conformance certificate (or a claim of conformance) might only state that an implementation had been tested to completion, and provide a list of the errors that were found. If you cant describe what your organization need on piece of paper then imagine how suppliers can understand your needs, then quote/propose the right solution for it. met to be considered responsive. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) are addressing XML-related interoperability issues by jointly developing test suites that are intended to complement the W3C Recommendations. There are additional advantages when a technical specifications document is drawn up and it forms an integral part of the procurement process and order placement. Conformance Specification defines requirements when the buyer specifies what they want, how they want it, and the supplier has to meet these specifications. If you do not use a third party laboratory, you may label this section N/A. If the mattresses being certified are for cribs or childrens size mattresses, please see the requirements for issuing a CPC. QUALIFIED PRODUCT LIST (QPL): A Nevertheless, the larger and more varied the set of inputs is, the more confidence can be placed in an implementation whose testing generates no errors. A locked padlock The test suite will focus on XSL transformations (XSLT) and XML Path Language (XPath). be as non-restrictive as practicable, consistent with satisfying DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS: Design It will be super helpful to build on that. This approach, used in both the Public and Private sectors is best described Barbara Shayan, M.A, Six Sigma Green Belt Certified. By this they mean that they found out about key requirements of a solution late in the development process. Interoperability is defined as the capability of two or more systems to exchange and use information. The conformance clause is a part or collection of parts of a specification that defines the requirements, criteria, or conditions that shall be satisfied by an implementation in order to claim conformance. ) or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. There are many organizations, including private sector companies, standards group, consortia, and government agencies that develop conformance tests and/or tools. A reference implementation has maximum value in the early stages of a conformance program. It is not sufficient to have this paper, of course. The test software, consisting of a set of test files (i.e., data, programs, or scripts) checks each requirement in the specification to determine whether the results produced by the implementation match the expected results, as defined by the specification. 7. Generically, a conformance test suite is a collection of combinations of legal and illegal inputs to the implementation being tested, together with a corresponding collection of "expected results." Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Quality standards are defined as documents that provide requirements, specifications, guidelines, or characteristics that can be used consistently to ensure that materials, products, processes, and services are fit for their purpose. Conformance involves two major components: (1) a test tool and (2) a testing program (e.g., certification or branding). DEFINITIONS 2.1 Centroidal Area. Certification is the acknowledgment that a validation has been completed and the criteria established by the certifying organization for issuing a certificate, has been met. Additionally, the documentation should be detailed enough so that testing of a given implementation can be repeated with no change in test results. Conformance with Specification. Is this a requirement that comes from a particular type of user? 3. By definition, a number of ways. what cost. Speaking generally, one is the specification that Greater share of specification risk is borne by the supplier. 4 What are the characteristics of a good specification in procurement? What is specification? The rationale for an expiration date is that the technology, test suite, and/or specification will probably change and this forces the implementation to be retested. This board should be a body of impartial experts. Applications often do not require all the features within a standard. A good specification should do four things: (1) Identify minimum requirements, (2) allow for a competitive bid, (3) list reproducible test methods to be used in testing for compliance with specifications, and (4) provide for an equitable award at the lowest possible cost. 5. trailer << /Size 1253 /Info 1209 0 R /Root 1216 0 R /Prev 331028 /ID[<421cc0d9af76233486a43ba075a266a0><421cc0d9af76233486a43ba075a266a0>] >> startxref 0 %%EOF 1216 0 obj << /Type /Catalog /Pages 1212 0 R /Metadata 1210 0 R /Outlines 157 0 R /OpenAction [ 1217 0 R /XYZ null null null ] /PageMode /UseNone /PageLabels 1208 0 R /StructTreeRoot 1206 0 R /PieceInfo << /MarkedPDF << /LastModified (D:20020325133406)>> >> /LastModified (D:20020325133406) /MarkInfo << /Marked true /LetterspaceFlags 0 >> >> endobj 1251 0 obj << /S 702 /O 971 /L 987 /C 1003 /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 1252 0 R >> stream 136 Conformance vs. bidders offering products other than specified obtain Click here for Terms & Conditions. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. A conformance clause is a section of a specification that states all the requirements or criteria that must be satisfied to claim conformance to the specification. 0000002465 00000 n Define performance specification. Often a hybrid of these is appropriate -- i.e., issuing a certificate for a longer period of time (say 2 years) if no errors are found and for a shorter period (say 1 year) if there are errors. A lock ( Development of the test suite may well be the costliest part of the conformance program. A specification details the requirements of the procurement. Departments wishing to to a single product and is the most restrictive kind of Purchasing will assist and advise you in If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. Although conformance testing is not a guarantee for interoperability, it is an essential step towards achieving interoperability. ! Early stage specifications can be seen as part of the review with the customer (internal or external) about what they are looking to achieve on the project. The overall purpose of a Depending on the type of specification (e.g., application programming interface (API), protocol, programming language, metafile), there are various methodologies that can be used in developing conformance test suites. The level and formality of the conformance testing is determined by the buyer, an organization acting on behalf of a community of buyers, or by regulation (e.g., safety, health, national security concerns). performance, quality or essential characteristics must be 0000066233 00000 n There are different types of technical or engineering specifications (specs), and the term is used differently in different technical contexts.