Acceptance Sampling

Acceptance sampling is an important field of statistical quality control that was popularized by Dodge and Roming (1959) and originally applied by the U.S. military to the testing of bullets during World War II. If every bullet were tested in advance, no bullet would be left to ship. If, on the other hand, none were tested, malfunctions might occur in the field of battle, with potentially disastrous results.


Dodge reasoned that a sample should be picked at random from the lot and on the basis of information that was yielded by the sample, a decision should be made regarding the disposition of the lot. The process is called lot acceptance sampling or just acceptance sampling.

Acceptance sampling is the task of taking samples from the lot and decides whether the lot is to be accepted or rejected, on the basis of evidence provided by inspection of samples drawn at random. If the average quality level is indicated by the sample, the lot is accepted, if not the lot is rejected.

The main purpose of acceptance sampling is to decide whether or not the lot likely to be acceptable, not to estimate the quality of the lot. The plan merely accepts or rejects the lots.

Acceptance sampling is employed when one or several of the following hold:

• Testing is destructive.

• The cost of 100% inspection is very high.

• 100% inspection takes too long.