An Improved System of Skip-Lot Acceptance Sampling Plans for Highway Construction and Materials: Fid-Bau Portal

An Improved System of Skip-Lot Acceptance Sampling Plans for Highway Construction and Materials

Balamurali, Saminathan / Baranitharan, Balakrishnan

Abstract The concept of acceptance sampling plans ensures the quality of products and materials used in highway construction. These acceptance sampling plans require the testing of each and every individual lot of products for the highway construction and materials. This approach of sampling is applicable and appropriate if the supplier or contractor is unreliable. If the contractor is consistent and reliable, then instead of inspecting each and every lot of products, skip-lot sampling system can be utilized where only a fraction of the lots are inspected after assuring the quality and after a certain number of conforming lots is obtained. Skip-lot sampling plan can be used for reducing the amount of inspection on product that has an excellent quality history. Thus, skip-lot sampling plans are designed to reduce inspection costs. Moreover, skip-lot concept is sound and useful and it is economically advantageous in the design of sampling plans. Hence, this paper presents an improved system of skip-lot sampling plans designated as SkSP-V plan for the application of highway construction and materials. Advantages of this plan over the existing skip-lot plan and AASHTO’s lot-by-lot sampling plan are also discussed. The efficiency of this new plan is also investigated.