The Illusion Of Quality: Controlling Subjective Inspection

Abstract

An inspection process that depends on subjective evaluation may give a misleading image of product quality. An experiment was conducted at an electronics company to measure the accuracy of inspectors’ judgements on the acceptability/rejectability of electrical connections. Using a statistical measure of agreement, it was found that inspectors were accepting a high proportion of electrical connections that should have been rejected. After identifying management deficiencies, recommendations are given for improving the accuracy of the inspection process.