ABSTRACT
657A large majority of the sampling systems found on the market, selected, installed, and maintained by engineering firms and their clients today, transgress the most elementary rules of sampling correctness or sampling equiprobability. During 30 years, the author visited and inspected sampling systems in more than 300 industrial facilities around the world (e.g., milling facilities, flotation plants, aluminum and copper smelters, cement plants, steel plants, coal cleaning facilities, coal burning power plants, coal mines, gold and copper mines, chemical plants, refineries, commercial laboratories, and many others), and found only few sampling stations that were well designed and well maintained. This is a very sad conclusion, especially at a time when most industries are starting to apply principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) and of Statistical Process Control (SPC and Six Sigma programs). It should be clearly understood by anyone concerned with the quality of a product that SPC or Six Sigma without precise and accurate sampling is an exercise in futility, like TQM without SPC is an exercise that will never bear fruit for a company.
