TABLE OF CONTENTS A reader having diligently studied the previous 11 chapters may find some of the material in Chapter 12 to be repetitious. The reason is that we strive to have this chapter to be self contained. Beginners and/or practitioners may be inclined to the start reading the book with this chapter. Acceptance sampling plans have been for the last 50 years one of the most practical tools in classical quality control applications, which deal with a quality contracting of product orders between the factories and their customers. Such a plan provides the vendor and the buyer with a general criterion for lot sentencing while meeting their preset requirements for the quality of product orders. A well-designed sampling plan can substantially reduce the difference between the required (expected) and the actual supplied product quality. Acceptance sampling plan, however, cannot avoid the risk of accepting unwanted poor product lots, nor can it avoid the risk of rejecting good product lots unless 100% inspection is implemented. Acceptance sampling plan is a statement regarding the required sample size for product inspection and the associated acceptance or rejection criterion for sentencing each individual lot. The criteria used for measuring the performance in an acceptance sampling plan, are usually based the operating characteristic (OC) curve which quantifies the risks for vendors and buyers. The OC curve plots the probability of accepting the lot against actual lot fraction defective, which provides the discriminatory power of the sampling plan. That is, the OC curve shows the probability...
