Thales Systems Canada places considerable emphasis on total quality management and has maintained a formal quality system since its inception in 1984. In 1996, the AQAP-1/AQAP-13 system was superseded by our current ISO 9001/ISO 9000-3/ISO 12207 quality system. The entire company was audited by an independent Quality Systems Registrar, SGS International and was certified to ISO 9001 in September 1996 by the Standards Council of Canada. Company activities are audited every six months by SGS.

The quality system consists of documented practices and procedures and is internally published on Thales Systems Canada's Intranet, which is freely accessible by all company employees. It is the policy of Thales to rigorously implement these documented practices and procedures and to monitor and analyse their implementation in order to continuously improve the quality of products and services.

The ISO 9000 Steering Committee is chaired by the President, and is comprised of the heads of:

(a) Systems Engineering Process Group (SPG);

(b) Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG);

(c) Integrated Logistics Support Process Group (ILSPG);

(d) Quality Process Group (QPG);

(e) Configuration Management Process Group (CMPG); and

(f) Data Management Process Group (DMPG).

This committee allocates budgets and resources to ensure that the processes in place for these five critical functions are continuously improved.

The ISO 9000 Steering Committee meets annually to review the effectiveness of the Quality System to ensure that the documentation reflects the company commitment to quality. In addition to this, the committee meets at least quarterly to initially set quality goals for each year and to track progress to attain these goals.

As well as the oversight provided by the ISO 9000 Committee, the Senior Management addresses any current quality issues through the normal monthly management meetings and project reviews. This ensures that quality problems and issues are brought to the attention of Thales Systems Canada's senior management staff and are dealt with promptly. It is the responsibility of managers at all levels to ensure that the Quality System is implemented.

All Thales Systems Canada's employees are encouraged to forward suggestions for preventive action and process improvement to their respective process groups and to actively participate in the process groups on a rotating basis.

At Thales Systems Canada, Quality is a way of life. Through the ISO 9000 Steering Committee, there is a pervasive, company-wide focus on optimizing processes for continuous quality improvement. Our entire team works hard to ensure that all of our products and services will consistently meet or exceed our customers’ expectations.

The Foundations of Thales Systems Canada's Quality

The cornerstones of Thales Systems Canada's quality system are firmly anchored on the four critical foundation stones: Management Responsibility, an active and consistent quality audit program, a highly integrated Corrective/ Preventive Action reporting system (CPAR) and, the glue that holds it all together, employee training and personal development.

The entire Thales Systems Canada team is data driven in a constant search for better solutions. Senior management reviews frequent inputs from the projects and the Corrective/Preventive Action board reviews company-wide non-conformance data, productivity data, internal audit findings, situation reports from off-site installation and service crews.

Training requirements are recognized and reviewed in several different ways, including each employee’s input to the performance appraisal process, each manager reviewing the entire department’s needs as another input, and each project identifying specific project based requirements. An overall training program is planned for each year and is carefully monitored to ensure that employees receive the planned training and that in each case, the effectiveness of that training is assessed and recorded.