| Abstract: | This paper considers the problems of designing inspection strategies for production systems terms in the presence of environmental uncertainty. The framework for determining information priorities to support inspection system planning is presented in the contaxt of a generic production system that encompasses the characteristics of many real-world serial production systems. The impact on the design decision of five key variables is considered: quality of producton processes, quality of inspection procedures, penalty cost for undetected defective units, relative cost of improving process vs. inspection, and shape of the cost functions for process and inspection enhancement. The framework for analysis involves varying factors over two or three orders of magnitude to determine optimal inspection strategies across a wide range of environments These results are used to compare design decisions made in the presence of environmental uncertainty using expected-opportunity-cost and minimization-of-maximum-opportunity-cost approaches. Design strategies are identified for situations ranging from complete lack of knowledge about the environment through increasing levels of information. Information-gathering priorities are established, and the impact on the design decision of this additional information is assayed. |
