We import millions of fasteners into our facility. We have been using Mil Std 105E to conduct our sampling. This gives us a good guideline for sampling, but I'm concerned with PPM and AOQL. As a novice in the field of QC, could someone help me with some ideas as to what methods of sampling I should implement?

Some questions I have...

1) What is standard sampling procedures for fasteners?
2) If focus is on ppm as opposed to AQL, how is lot sampling conducted?
3) When conducting lot samples, should all dimensions be checked or only critical dimensions that cause the part not to function?

I have hundreds of questions and not enough time to type them all out, so I'll start with these three.

Can anyone provide some guidance?

I'll take a quick stab. Let's start with these questions:

why are you inspecting fastners? they are 'commodity parts' (unless custom designed, which is relatively rare).

have you had fastner failures in your product?

in my experience, 'most' fastner failures are because the designers didn't properly specify the fastner type for the material or stress.

I'll take a quick stab. Let's start with these questions:

why are you inspecting fastners? they are 'commodity parts' (unless custom designed, which is relatively rare).

have you had fastner failures in your product?

in my experience, 'most' fastner failures are because the designers didn't properly specify the fastner type for the material or stress.


Yes, the term "fasteners" is very broad. These are almost all custom parts. We get a print from a customer, and have the parts manufactured overseas

And yes, we have had failures. The reason we check the parts here is because we have not yet perfected the quality control process at the manufacturers facility. Often, our parts are sub-contracted to companies who have NO english speaking employees. Our China office can only do so much! We only have 3 employees in China.