Creating inspection orders

An inspection order is the basis for all quality control work performed on the shop floor. It is built up of a series of tests to be performed on a specific item, and contains all information relevant to the execution, and later the results, of these tests.

The best practice is to generate inspection orders automatically whenever

• goods reach the warehouse,
• a production order has been released (approved) (this functionality is available only if your ERP system is SAP Business One), or
• a production run has been completed.

In this way, you will never overlook any event that requires inspection.

Accordingly, Inspect / Manager can detect when

1. a new goods receipt, or A/P invoice is created in SAP Business One, or a purchase receipt is created in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central;
2. a production order is released in SAP Business One or approved in Produce / Manager; and
3. a receipt from production is created in SAP Business One, or a production receipt is created in Business Central.

If the conditions you set in your automation rules are met, Inspect / Manager will automatically create the corresponding inspection order(s).

For automations, see Creating and managing automation rules if your ERP system is SAP Business One and Creating and managing automation rules if your ERP system is Microsoft Business Central.

Manual creation

You may need to create inspection orders manually to handle special scenarios in your day-to-day work. To do so, click the + Add new button in the top right corner of the Inspect / Manager screen, and select Inspection order from the drop-down list. (Alternatively, you can hit Add inspection order on the inspection order list page.)

Then specify the details of the inspection order as follows.

1. Select the item that you wish to have inspected by clicking the Assign item button. You can search for your item in the search field.

2. In case you select an item managed by batches / serial numbers in your ERP system, you are prompted for the batch / serial number.

For items that are not managed by batches or serial numbers, the corresponding field is not displayed.

3. Enter a numeric value in the Quantity field that will indicate the quantity of items from which the test samples will have to be taken.

4. Select the sampling plan to be applied from the Sampling plan drop-down list.

5. Add the tests to be carried out by the operator to your inspection order.

You can save an inspection order without tests, but for actually releasing it to the shop floor, adding test(s) is mandatory. Inspect / Manager warns you in an information bar if your inspection order does not contain any tests yet.

To add tests one by one manually, click the + Add test button.

However, the recommended practice is to add all test steps at once by selecting an inspection plan. An inspection plan is like a template that contains the required test specifications. It is a time saver, so you do not need to specify tests from scratch.

To use a set of such ready-made tests, press the Add from inspection plan button, and select from the list that appears. You can search for a plan in the search field.

An inspection plan is only relevant until an inspection order is created from it, and it can be edited afterwards, so orders can be customized before they are released to the shop floor.

Though in the case of a manually created inspection order the specification of an inspection plan in optional, for automatically generated inspection orders it is mandatory.

The screenshot below shows a manually generated inspection order complete with test(s), ready for releasing it to the operator.