Aspects of inspection in a knitwear company

The paper presents some of the results of a preliminary study on inspection performance in industry. Four data-gathering exercises were carried out; two concerned with measuring the accuracy of the examiners, one attempted to elucidate some of the differences between 'good' and 'bad' examiners in terms of their perceptions and knowledge of the task, and one presented some of the results to management representatives for comment. The results are discussed briefly, and a number of general conclusions drawn. Examiners' detection performance for faults is of the order of 50%, in a production process where the fault rate is of the order of 50%. It is believed that part of the cause for the above performance is due to organisational aspects of the job design. Communication of relevant information regarding the above is virtually non-existent, which has allowed the situation to continue as it is, and has allowed the organisation to believe that a much better state of affair exists. This company is not unusual in the industry in the above respects.