I recently purchased a flat-panel monitor for my computer. When I got it home and plugged it in, I noticed one of the pixels in the middle of the screen was burned. It was a bright–green beacon in a sea of liquid crystal that affixed my gaze. No matter what was on my screen, I could not take my eyes off of this bright burned–out pixel. Naturally, I exchanged the monitor for another one, feeling slightly jilted that I had to take an extra trip to the store because the company had provided me with a defective monitor. I am not one for shopping in the first place, and having to return to the store to exchange the merchandise, and run the risk of getting another monitor with a different but amusing defect weighed heavily on my mind.

Acceptance sampling is a statistical procedure for accepting or rejecting a batch of merchandise. It is applied after it is produced and before it is used. This inspection can occur at the supplier’s side or the delivery side of the product. The acceptance quality level is determined on the supplier’s side. Acceptance quality level sampling is used to determine the producer’s risk of the product. The lot tolerance percent defective is the level of rejections on the delivery side of the product. Acceptance sampling is needed when the producer or consumer wants to limit the risk in sending or receiving an acceptable level of batch merchandise.

If the company that produced my monitor had had more through acceptance sampling, it might have saved me that extra trip to the store. Less gasoline would have been belched into the atmosphere, and this tainted memory would have been just a figment of my overactive imagination.