Chapter two

Quality control and Quality assurance in

textile Industry

Part -II
 Inspection
• Inspection is a comparison made, at certain stages in the
course of production, between what has actually been
produced and what should have been produced based on a
specifications, drawings or visual quality standards

• Things that are unlikely to go wrong need little checking

and those which are difficult to hold within limits will need a
considerable amount of attention – optimal inspection

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Cont.d
• However, if the job is still wrong, no amount of inspection
will put it right
 Different forms of inspection

According to production flow, the inspection may be

divided into three:

A. Incoming inspection

B. In-process inspection

C. Final inspection
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A.Incoming inspection
• Incoming inspection concerns goods upon delivery from
vendors and/or suppliers

• It consists of inspection of raw materials, components,

sub-assemblies and so on

 The aim of incoming inspection is to prevent goods that

do not fulfil the quality requirements from entering the
production process.

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.Incoming inspection is one of the following steps in the
control of the quality of supplies:

• Preparation of buying specification - setting out exactly

what quality of material has to be obtained

• vendor appraisal or supplier evaluation - Possible

suppliers are checked for their ability and willingness to
provide this quality

• If the results of the vendor appraisal are satisfactory,

then the supplier is placed on an approved list and
purchase orders are placed when goods are required
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Cont.d
• When goods are received, they are subjected to some form of
goods inward inspection

• vendor rating - numerical rating of suppliers based on the

results of the inspection showing how satisfactory or
otherwise its suppliers are

• The results at every stage are monitored and steps taken to

improve or discontinue unsatisfactory suppliers.

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B.In-process inspection
• In-process inspection aims to prevent products of unacceptable
quality from being manufactured

• It provides data for making decisions on the product (accept or

rework or reject), as well as on the process (run or stop).

 In-process inspection can take the form of:

• First-piece inspection

• Patrol inspection

• Operator inspection

• Last-piece inspection

• Stage inspection
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 Cont.d
 First-piece inspection
• Checking the first piece, the first assembly and so on before the
main run commences

• Many faults can be detected preventing the whole batch from going
wrong, it includes:

• checking whether the machine, jigs, fixtures, moulds, temperature

and so on are correctly set up

• Discovering whether an operator has fully understood his or her

instructions
• identify any discrepancies between the drawing and the quality plan

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Cont.d

 Patrol inspection
• its purpose is to help the operator make the whole run
correctly

• inspector visits the machine or operator time to time

• if the quality of the sample checked during the visit is wrong on

any point, then this must be corrected as quickly as possible

• If an operator goes wrong, he or she should be told quickly

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Cont.d
 Operator inspection
• instead of the inspector, the operator carries out the inspection at a
predetermined time during manufacturing

 Last-piece inspection

• carried out on the last item manufactured in the lot

• it allows action to be taken to rectify faults in the machine and/or

tools before beginning the next lot

• If these faults are only detected when the next lot has started, there

will be a risk of production delays.

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Cont.d

 Stage inspection
• involves inspection of products after every operation or group
of operations.

• Stage inspection points are located on the shop floor itself,

where components are tendered for inspection.

• Jobs(tasks) found to be unacceptable are returned for

rectification if they are rectifiable, otherwise they are scrapped

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Final inspection
• Final inspection and/or testing is done after manufacture has
been completed,

• With the object of making sure that the goods concerned are
satisfactory for dispatch to the customer or maybe to another
department for the next operation

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Cont.d

 Options of inspection
• No inspection until we get defective product due to material
conditions

• Using the test certificate of the supplier

• 100% inspection

• Sampling of lots inspection

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ACCEPTANCE SAMPLING
 Acceptance Sampling is a form of inspection that is used to
determine whether or not goods are coherent with a set standard of
quality based on samples

• As compared to 100% inspection

– Reduce monotony

– can use destructive testing of samples

– Efficient administration of the inspection process and the decision

to be made

– Comparatively inexpensive

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Cont.d
Advantages of Sampling

• If inspection is destructive, 100% inspection is not feasible

• Though 100% inspection give assurance for satisfactory

quality, it is not economical, impractical in destructive testing
and in huge quantity

• Sampling is more economical and cause less damage due to

handling

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Cont.d
Sampling is preferable

– when inspection cost is high

– When Inspection time is long

– Limited resource

– When it is destructive

– When developing new products

– When dealing with new suppliers

– When a supplier’s product has had excellent quality in the past

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Cont.d
Sampling reduces inspection error

– In high quantity, repetitive inspection such as 100% inspection,

inspector fatigue can prevent the identification of all
nonconformity

– may lead to a false assurance selection of variables to be

inspected for is in the hand of the inspector and may not cover
important factors, hence, it may lead to type I and type II errors

– Sampling provides a strong motivation to improve quality

because an entire batch or lot may be rejected

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Cont.d

Disadvantages of Sampling

– There is risk of rejecting “good” lots and accepting “bad”

lots (identified as producers risk and consumers risk
respectively)

– There is less information about the product, compared to

that of obtained from 100% inspection

– Selection and adoption of sampling plan require more time

and effort in planning and documentation

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Cont.d
 Inspection of textiles
• Defect detection – identification of presence of defects

• Defect classification - determination of the textile products'

quality level

• The traditional human inspection is not only very inefficient

because of the need of great labor intensity, but also unreliable
because of the workers' fatigue caused by a long time of staring

• Defects like broken pick or coarse yarn are sort of defects that
can be detected directly on the loom

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Cont.d
• defects like appearance fault, a stain, a hole or a weft kinks, belong to
class of defects that can be noticed by visual only
 major difficulties for the development of the automatic fabric
inspection systems:-
• real time operation - during a very short time interval, the surface
defects must be detected and classified - problem of intense
computing capability and speed
• increase the robustness of the inspection – to tolerate the precision of
the cloth speed pulled by the mechanical pulling equipment which can
hardly be guaranteed, so that the position of the optic-electrical device
can be maintained
• Affordability of the system - costly

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 Development of textile quality
standards
 Organizational Quality standards are quality levels required or
generally agreed in that organization

• Different organizations may set different standards according to

their needs, unless there is centrally governing institute for
standardization eg. ISO 14000 – model for environmental
management system

• A textile company, thus, can develop internal standards for raw

materials, intermediate products and finished goods

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Cont.d
• For setting standards, the quality characteristics of textile (fibre,
yarn and fabric) products are important

• Eg staple length of cotton, maturity of cotton, strength of yarn,

ends per inch of a fabric, width of a fabric, color fastness to
wash (fast to 10 – 15 washes)

• For each of such characteristics, the company sets acceptable

limits then if the intended material be it raw or processed, falls
on that range it will be accepted otherwise be rejected, or go to
rework, or totally thrown as a scrape or salvaged if possible.

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Quality Assurance in textiles

• It consists of planned and systematic activities, implemented

within the quality system and demonstrated as needed, to
provide adequate confidence that an entity will fulfil given
requirements for quality

• Quality assurance then assures that incoming materials meet

requirement standards, products meet their design
specifications, orders are processed as per customer demands

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Thank you!

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