Operations Management: Processes and Supply Chains, 12th Edition

Acceptance Sampling

Before any internal process can be evaluated for performance, the inputs to that process must be of good quality. Acceptance sampling, which is the application of statistical techniques to determine if a quantity of material from a supplier should be accepted or rejected based on the inspection or test of one or more samples, limits the buyer’s risk of rejecting good-quality materials (and unnecessarily delaying the production of goods or services) or accepting bad-quality materials (and incurring downtime due to defective materials or passing bad products to customers). Relative to the specifications for the material the buyer is purchasing, the buyer specifies an acceptable quality level (AQL), which is a statement of the ...