Title: Inspection Exercise
Course: PW-Course-Import-Test > Section: Module 1: Introduction to Quality Control

Module 1

How good are you at 100% accurate inspection?

Your job is going to be that of an inspector. As an inspector you are looking for the number of defects in your product. For this exercise, the letter ‘f’ (upper- or lowercase) is considered a defect. Therefore, your job is to count how many times the letter f appears in the paragraph below. There are some constraints. You do work under a time constraint. You will have two minutes to complete your inspection. Also, you are not allowed to alter the product that you are inspecting—so you cannot print this out and write on the page. Ready to begin? Start your two minute timer and begin the inspection.

The necessity of training farm hands for the first class farms in the fatherly handling of farm livestock is foremost in the minds of farm owners. Since the forefathers of the farm owners trained the farm hands for the first class farms in the fatherly handling of farm livestock, the farm owners feel they should carry on with the family tradition of training farm hands of first class farms in the fatherly handling of farm livestock because they believe it is the basis of good fundamental farm management.

How many times does the letter f appear in the paragraph?

More likely than not, if we did this exercise in a big group you would see different answers for the total number of fs. What needed to be inspected was very clear, yet only a few people report the right answer.

Would you have fared differently if you did not have a time limitation? What if you went back and checked your answer and this time got a different one? Which number would you choose? Would you go and inspect for a third time?

So what do we learn from this exercise? This exercise helps us recognize that 100% inspection is not 100% accurate.

By the way, there are thirty-six fs in the paragraph.