Inspection in the Telecommunications Industry: A Field Study of Age arid Other Performance Variables

Abstract

A field study was undertaken to investigate the problems of inspection in the telecommunications industry, and to assess the effect of age on inspection performance. The main inspection tasks, at the final assembly stage, were analysed in terms of sensory discrimination, and records were kept of individual efficiency by quality control sampling techniques. The study also included information on an organizational factor which was found to affect performance The main findings were as follows. Performance differences, where they existed, favoured the older inspectors; efficiency in the visual inspection of telephone racks was improved when inspection was isolated from production; inspection tasks requiring absolute judgments by vision wore significantly more erroneous than were inspection tasks requiring absolute judgments by kinesthesia; a predominance of inspection errors could be attributed to judgments based on grain gauges which demand a response to bi-sensory (visual and kinoesthetic) cues.