Designing Variables Sampling Plans with Process Loss Consideration

For the implementation of an acceptance sampling plan, a problem the quality practitioners have to deal with is the determination of the critical acceptance values and inspection sample sizes that provide the desired levels of protection to both vendors and buyers. Traditionally, most acceptance sampling plans focus on the percentage of defective products instead of considering the process loss, which doesn't distinguish among the products that fall within the specification limits. However, the quality between products that fall within the specification limits may be very different. So how to design an acceptance sampling plan with process loss consideration is necessary. In this article, a variables sampling plan based on L _e is proposed to handle processes requiring low process loss. The required sample sizes n and the critical acceptance value c with various combination of acceptance quality level are tabulated. The proposed sampling plan provides a feasible policy, which can be applied to products requiring low process loss where classical sampling plans cannot be applied.