Acceptance sampling

Imagine you have a big bag of candies that you want to check if they are good or not. You cannot get enough time and money to check each and every candy in the bag, so what do you do? This is where acceptance sampling comes into play.

Acceptance sampling is a method used to inspect a certain part of a batch of items to decide whether to accept the whole batch or reject it. The important concept here is that you choose a certain number of candies from the bag and check them, instead of checking every single candy.

To make it easier, let's say you have 100 candies in your bag. You can randomly select 10 candies to inspect. You set a standard, like good candies should not have any defects, and if all 10 candies you inspected do not have any defects, then you can accept the whole bag, assuming that all the other candies are similar to the ones you sampled.

But if one or more candies have defects, then you may have a problem with your whole bag, and you may want to reject it. This means that you’ll have to check each candy individually or send it back to the manufacturer.

Acceptance sampling helps manufacturers to test a large number of products in a short time and at a lower cost, with the assurance that the majority, if not all, of the products are in good condition based on the samples tested.