AS 1199.

4—2003
ISO 2859-4:2002
AS 1199.4

Australian Standard™
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Sampling procedures for inspection by

attributes

Part 4: Procedures for assessment of

declared quality levels
 This Australian Standard was prepared by Committee QR-008, Quality Systems. It
was approved on behalf of the Council of Standards Australia on 28 May 2003 and
published on 28 July 2003.

The following are represented on Committee QR-008:

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Australian Industry Group
Australian Information Industry Association
Australian Institute of Petroleum
Australian Organisation for Quality
Bureau of Steel Manufacturers of Australia
Certification Bodies (Australia)
Commonwealth Department of Transport and Regional Services
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Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (Commonwealth)

Department of Defence (Australia)
Department of Industry Science and Resources (Commonwealth)
Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries
Institute of Materials Engineering Australasia
Institution of Engineers Australia
Main Roads Department, Queensland
Master Builders Australia
Quality Society of Australasia
Royal Australian Chemical Institute
Additional interests participating in the preparation of this Standard:
Australian Quality Council
CSIRO Mathematical and Information Services
Macquarie University
National Association of Testing Authorities Australia
Queensland University of Technology

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2001.

This Standard was issued in draft form for comment as DR 03250.

 AS 1199.4—2003

Australian Standard™
This is a free 7 page sample. Access the full version at http://infostore.saiglobal.com.

Sampling procedures for inspection by

attributes

Part 4: Procedures for assessment of

declared quality levels

First published as AS 1199.4—2003.

COPYRIGHT
© Standards Australia International
All rights are reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without the written permission of the
publisher.
Published by Standards Australia International Ltd
GPO Box 5420, Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia
ISBN 0 7337 5436 8
 ii

PREFACE

This Standard was prepared by the Standards Australia Committee QR-008, Quality Systems.
This Standard is identical with, and has been reproduced, from ISO 2859-4:2002, Sampling
procedures for inspection by attributes, Part 4: Procedures for assessment of declared quality levels.
The objective of this Standard is to establish sampling plans and procedures that can be used to assess
whether the quality level of an entity (lot, process, etc.) conforms to a declared value.
As this Standard is reproduced from an international standard, the following applies:
(a) Its number appears on the cover and title page while the international standard number appears
only on the cover.
(b) A full point substitutes for a comma when referring to a decimal marker.
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References to International Standards should be replaced by references to Australian or

Australian/New Zealand Standards, as follows:
Reference to International Standard Australian/New Zealand Standard
ISO AS/NZS ISO
9000 Quality management systems— 9000 Quality management systems—
Fundamentals and vocabulary Fundamentals and vocabulary
Only International Standard referenced documents identical to Australian Standards have been listed.
The term ‘informative’ has been used in this Standard to define the application of the annex to which
it applies. An ‘informative’ annex is only for information and guidance.
The International Organization for Standardization’s Committee TC 69 is currently in the process of
updating the ISO 2859 series to bring the older documents into line with Parts 1 and 4. Where any
inconsistency arises between the sections of this series of Standards, the more recently published
document will apply.
 iii ISO 2859-4:2002(E)

CONTENTS

Contents Page
Page

1 Scope ............................................................................................................................................................... 1
2 Normative references ....................................................................................................................................... 2
3 Terms, definitions, symbols and abbreviations ................................................................................................. 2
4 Principles .......................................................................................................................................................... 3
5 Declared quality level (DQL) ............................................................................................................................. 4
6 Sampling plans ................................................................................................................................................. 4
7 Operating a sampling plan ................................................................................................................................ 6
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8 Further information ........................................................................................................................................... 7

Annex
A Examples of use of the procedures ................................................................................................................ 11
A.1 Example 1 ................................................................................................................................................... 11
A.2 Example 2 ................................................................................................................................................... 11
A.3 Example 3 ................................................................................................................................................... 11

© ISO 2002 – All rights reserved iii

 iv ISO 2859-4:2002(E)

INTRODUCTION

Introduction
The procedures in this part of ISO 2859 differ in their scope from the procedures in ISO 2859 Parts 1 to 3. The
system of acceptance sampling procedures that are specified in ISO 2859 Parts 1 to 3 are intended to be used in
bilateral agreements between two parties. The acceptance sampling procedures are intended to be used as simple,
pragmatic rules for releasing product after inspection of only a limited sample of a consignment, and therefore the
procedures do not make reference (either explicitly or implicitly) to any formally declared quality level.

Under acceptance sampling there is no sharp borderline between quality levels that should be considered
acceptable and qualities that should be rejected by the procedure. For the procedures in ISO 2859-1 the two parties
agree upon some acceptance quality limit (AQL) which is the worst tolerable process average when a continuing
series of lots is submitted. The switching rules and the sampling schemes in ISO 2859-1 are designed to encourage
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the suppliers to have process averages consistently better than the AQL selected. In order to keep sample sizes
moderate, the protection against accepting individual lots of inferior quality may be less than that provided by
sampling plans targeted for sentencing individual lots. The procedures in ISO 2859-2, on the contrary, are designed
to provide good protection against accepting individual lots of inferior quality (LQ), but at the expense of a possible
high risk of not accepting lots of qualities that both parties actually would consider to be acceptable.

Procedures in ISO 2859 Parts 1 to 3 are well suited for acceptance sampling purposes, but they should not be used
in reviews, audits, etc. to verify a quality that has been declared for some entity. The main reason is that the
procedures have been indexed in terms of quality levels that are relevant solely for the pragmatic purposes of
acceptance sampling, and the various risks have been balanced accordingly.

The procedures in this part of ISO 2859 have been developed as a response to the growing need for sampling
procedures suitable for formal, systematic inspections such as reviews or audits. When performing such a formal
inspection, it is necessary for the authority to consider the risk of reaching an incorrect conclusion, and to take this
risk into account in planning and executing the review/audit/testing, etc.

This part of ISO 2859 provides guidance and rules to assist the user in taking this risk into account in an informed
manner.

The rules in this part of ISO 2859 have been devised such that there is only a small, limited risk of contradicting the
declared quality level when in fact the actual level conforms to the declared level.

If it were also desired that there should be a similarly small risk of not contradicting the declared quality level when in
fact the actual quality level does not conform to the declared quality level, then it would be necessary to investigate a
rather large sample. Therefore, in order to obtain the benefit of a moderate sample size, the procedures in this part
of ISO 2859 have been devised in such a way that they allow a somewhat higher risk of failing to contradict the
declared quality level when in fact the actual quality level does not conform to the declared quality level.

The wording of the result of the assessment should reflect this unbalance between the risks of reaching incorrect
conclusions.

When the sample result contradicts the declared quality level there is strong evidence of nonconformance to the
declared quality level.

When the sample result does not contradict the declared quality level, this should be understood as “we have not, in
this limited sample, found strong evidence of nonconformance to the declared quality level”.

© ISO 2002 – All rights reserved v

 1

AUSTRALIAN STANDARD

Sampling procedures for inspection by attributes —

Part 4:
Procedures for assessment of declared quality levels

1 Scope

This part of ISO 2859 establishes sampling plans and procedures that can be used to assess whether the quality
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level of an entity (lot, process, etc) conforms to a declared value. The sampling plans have been devised so as to
obtain a risk of less than 5 % of contradicting a correct declared quality level. The risk is 10 % of failing to contradict
an incorrect declared quality level which is related to the limiting quality ratio (see clause 4). Sampling plans are
provided corresponding to three levels of discriminatory ability.

In contrast to the procedures in the other parts of ISO 2859, the procedures in this part of ISO 2859 are not
applicable to acceptance assessment of lots. Generally, the balancing of the risks of reaching incorrect conclusions
in assessment procedures will differ from the balancing in the procedures for acceptance sampling.

This part of ISO 2859 may be used for various forms of quality inspection in situations where objective evidence of
conformity to some declared quality level is to be provided by means of inspection of a sample. The procedures are
applicable to entities such as lots, process output, etc. that allow random samples of individual items to be taken from
the entity.

The sampling plans provided in this part of ISO 2859 are applicable, but not limited, to inspection of a variety of
products such as

— end items;

— components and raw materials;

— operations;

— materials in process;

— supplies in storage;

— maintenance operations;

— data or records;

— administrative procedures.

The procedures are primarily intended to be used when the quantity of interest is the number or fraction of
nonconforming items for which the inspected items are classified as conforming or nonconforming.

With minor changes, the procedures may also be used when the quantity of interest is the number of nonconformities
or number of nonconformities per item. The necessary changes are:

— replacement of “number of nonconforming items” by “number of nonconformities”;

— replacement of “percent nonconforming items” by “nonconformities per 100 items”.

In this case the values given in Tables 2 to 7 are only approximations.

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AS 1199.4-2003, Sampling procedures for

inspection by attributes Procedures for
assessment of declared quality levels
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