ABSTRACT
In manufacturing, inspection has traditionally been an activity associated with customer protection: the inspector protected the customer from defects in the product. This role has gradually changed as we move towards techniques of in-line quality assurance (QA), and, more recently, offline QA. The aim now is to monitor the process, and its output, to determine whether it is in a state of control, i.e. will not produce defects (Vardeman and Jobe 1998). Inspection is now seen as a detection process within this QA system, so that the inspector is largely freed from ever seeing a defect. Indeed, if a production stream needs to be checked for defects, this is often performed automatically. Finally, any inspection activity has usually been reassigned to the production operator for the purpose of rapid control of the production process. Hence, there is unlikely to be a person with the title “inspector.” The natural question is whether there is indeed any role for a human inspector?
