Inspections and inspection plans
Check goods you receive against a written plan before they become stock, and accept or reject the whole lot.
An inspection is a check on goods you received, done before they count as stock you can use or sell. When a supplier's shipment arrives for an item you have told the app to inspect, the received units are held back until someone records the check and accepts or rejects the lot. An inspection plan says what to check on each unit and how many units to check.
Use it for purchased parts where a bad batch costs you at a customer's tank: regulators, valves, fittings, the seals your technicians fit on service calls (such as the POL valve seals the demo's service calls use), or new cylinders.
How an inspection starts when goods arrive
You do not create inspections by hand. Posting a receipt for an item that has an inspection plan assigned for Receipt creates one inspection per received line, and the received units go On Hold: received, but not yet available.
To make an item inspected on receipt, open the item, go to its quality tab, and under Inspection Plan Assignments choose the plan for Receipt, then Save.
How to build an inspection plan when an item needs checking
- Open Quality → Inspection Plans and choose New.
- Click to upload a PDF drawing: the supplier's specification sheet or drawing for the item.
- Add each thing to check as a feature (Add Feature), with its Description, Type, the target value (Nom), the allowed variation (Tol+ and Tol-) and Units. Place a numbered Balloon on the drawing where that feature is shown, so the inspector knows exactly what to look at. The app can suggest feature values from a region of the drawing you select.
- Set how many units to check under Sampling. Each feature uses the plan's Default Sampling unless you give it its own rule (Inherit document default keeps the default). The plan types are:
- Inspect All: every unit in the lot.
- Inspect First N: a fixed number of units.
- Percentage: a share of the lot (Percentage of Lot).
- AQL (Z1.4 / ISO 2859-1): statistical sampling by acceptable quality level (AQL), the defect rate you accept as good enough. You pick the AQL, the Inspection Level (II (normal default), I (reduced), III (tightened), or the special levels S-1 to S-4) and the Severity (Normal, Tightened or Reduced), and the Preview shows the resulting Sample Size for a lot size.
- Save. Download PDF gives you the drawing with its balloons for the inspector's clipboard.
Replacing the drawing later keeps the features but removes their balloon placements ("Drawing replaced. Balloon placements were removed; feature rows are unchanged.").
How to inspect a lot when it is waiting
- Open Quality → Inspections. The list shows each lot's Inspection number, Item, Lot Size, Sample, Source, Received At, Received By and Status.
- Open a lot. The screen shows the drawing beside a grid: one row per feature, one column per sampled unit.
- Add Sample for each unit you pull. For a serial-numbered item you scan or select the unit; for other items the sample is simply the next one checked.
- Record each feature's reading, or Pass / Fail for features that are a yes-or-no check. Each sample's result follows from its readings against the tolerances. For a lot without a plan, record Pass or Fail per sample in the Overall result row.
- Use Change Inspection Plan if the wrong plan was attached.
How to accept or reject a lot when the checking is done
- Accept Lot makes the held units available stock. The screen asks "Accept lot?" before it does.
- Reject Lot marks the lot's units rejected. The dialog lists the Failed features and has Open an NCR for MRB disposition ticked, with an Issue Type to choose: it opens an issue linked to the lot so your team can decide whether the material goes back to the supplier, is scrapped, or is used anyway. (NCR is the app's other name for an issue; MRB is the Material Review Board that makes that decision.)
- Create Issue is enabled once a serial-numbered unit has failed. It opens a new issue in another tab, already filled in with the item, the failed units and this lot, without rejecting the lot.
Once a lot is Passed or Failed it is closed: no more samples can be recorded on it.
If the reject succeeds but the issue cannot be opened, the lot stays rejected and a message says so, for example "Lot rejected. Configure at least one Issue Type and a default user location to auto-create an NCR." Add an issue type in Quality → Issue Types, set your default location, and raise the issue by hand.