Acceptance sampling

Acceptance sampling uses statistical sampling to determine whether to accept or reject a production lot of material. It has been a common quality control technique used in industry.

It is usually done as products leave the factory, or in some cases even within the factory. Most often a producer supplies a consumer with several items and a decision to accept or reject the items is made by determining the number of defective items in a sample from the lot. The lot is accepted if the number of defects falls below where the acceptance number or otherwise the lot is rejected.[1]

In general, acceptance sampling is employed when one or several of the following hold:[2]

  • testing is destructive;
  • the cost of 100% inspection is very high; and
  • 100% inspection takes too long.

A wide variety of acceptance sampling plans is available. For example, multiple sampling plans use more than two samples to reach a conclusion. A shorter examination period and smaller sample sizes are features of this type of plan. Although the samples are taken at random, the sampling procedure is still reliable.[3]

  1. ^ Kreyszig, Erwin (2006). Advanced Engineering Mathematics, 9th Edition. Wiley. p. 1248. ISBN 978-0-471-48885-9.
  2. ^ Eraldo Banovac, Dražan Kozak. "An analytic review of the characteristics of the Lot Acceptance Sampling Plans used for acceptance of large lots". International Review of Electrical Engineering (I.R.E.E.), Vol. 3, No. 6, November–December 2008, pp. 1070-1076.
  3. ^ Eraldo Banovac, Igor Kuzle. Applicability of the LASPs in the electric-power industry. Proceedings of the International IEEE Conference EUROCON 2009, Saint Petersburg, Russia, May 18–23, 2009, pp. 1152-1157.