Quality Management and Product Assurance Department

• to achieve an increased quality of the institute's results,
• to process and advance technical expertise and
• to contribute to the reliability and safety of selected topics and projects at the institute.

This mission is realised through three work tasks in the department, which are assigned to the team-members in a different composition.

One task is to maintain the integrated management system in the area of quality management within the framework of DIN EN ISO 9001, which also includes contributing to the institute's key figures and assisting with the implementation of continuous improvement, including the preparation and monitoring of DLR internal audits.

A further big department field is Product Assurance. Selected space projects of the institute are supported with the aim of minimising space-specific risks. Among other things, this means active risk management.

Product Assurance also deals with aspects that are intended to increase the reliability of the developed space system (e.g. suitable component selection, system safety, carrying out inspections). Product Assurance (PA) thus ensures that the project objectives defined in the PA plan and in the requirements documents are pursued at each project phase from A to F and are ensured together with project management.

The PA plans of the individual institute projects are customised and are based on the experience of the institute and the department. The aim is to support the institute projects in order to produce a reliable and successful space system. In recent years, the MASCOT, InSight:HP³, Eu:CROPIS, Gossamer, S2TEP, CompactSAT, MMX Rover (IDEFIX), ReFEx and Callisto projects have been supported by the department's Product Assurance engineers.

In addition the department is the supporting task of coordinating Work Safety at the institute. This takes place in close co-operation with the central DLR Work Safety department.