Visual Inspection Reliability for Precision Manufactured Parts

Sandia National Laboratories conducted an experiment for the National Nuclear Security Administration to determine the reliability of visual inspection of precision manufactured parts used in nuclear weapons.

Visual inspection has been extensively researched since the early 20th century; however, the reliability of visual inspection for nuclear weapons parts has not been addressed. In addition, the efficacy of using inspector confidence ratings to guide multiple inspections in an effort to improve overall performance accuracy is unknown. Further, the workload associated with inspection has not been documented, and newer measures of stress have not been applied.

Eighty-two inspectors in the U.S. Nuclear Security Enterprise inspected 140 parts for eight different defects.

Inspectors correctly rejected 85% of defective items and incorrectly rejected 35% of acceptable parts. Use of a phased inspection approach based on inspector confidence ratings was not an effective or efficient technique to improve the overall accuracy of the process. Results did verify that inspection is a workload-intensive task, dominated by mental demand and effort.

Hits for Nuclear Security Enterprise inspection were not vastly superior to the industry average of 80%, and they were achieved at the expense of a high scrap rate not typically observed during visual inspection tasks.

This study provides the first empirical data to address the reliability of visual inspection for precision manufactured parts used in nuclear weapons. Results enhance current understanding of the process of visual inspection and can be applied to improve reliability for precision manufactured parts.