The arms procurement agency on Monday announced a five-year plan to better ensure the quality of military supplies so as to boost the safety of servicepersons and enhance the competitiveness of homegrown materials.

Under the blueprint, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration plans to set quality criteria in major development phases and set up and run a support team in charge of checking if products fully meet requirements. 

 

The plan also calls for assigning "patrol" officials to military units or other end users to confirm that they are untertaking appropriate maintenance and providing other technical support, it added.

In order to improve the system for overall quality management, the agency also vowed to build additional facilities and equipment for testing and to nurture expertise.

"The government has so far focused on seeing whether those supplies satisfy military standards, which in part has caused problems. But this shift in paradigm will help prevent defects in advance and boost the reliability of our products, which is expected to provide a competitive edge in the global market," DAPA official Park Seung-heung said. (Yonhap)