From: Stan Hilliard
Date: 26 Sep 2001
Time: 15:32:34
Greetings Tommy,
You are not the first person that cannot state the meaning of inspection levels. I don't think they have an intrinsic meaning - except that higher levels result in larger samples. I know that is not a satisfactory answer if you want to understand and describe rather than just to follow rules.
There is a similar problem with AQL when it is used with standards that contain inspection levels. There are two different definitions of AQL. To understand what the problem is and to learn a better way to develop sampling plans without inspection levels study the following web pages:
www.samplingplans.com/aqlprimer.htm
www.samplingplans.com/usingoccurves.htm
www.samplingplans.com/modern3.htm
It looks to me like you have two options. 1) Follow the standard faithfully and with hope. 2) Study the above and understand what your sampling plan is doing. Option (2 will enable you to match a plan's performance to your sampling requirements.
Sincerely, Stan Hilliard