A Fault Tree Approach to Quality Control by Variables

Based on the analogy between the events ``component failed´´ (in reliability) and ``measurement out of tolerances´´ (in quality control) acceptance sampling by variables is investigated when using the measurements made at several check-points for each device to be tested. The joint use of the fault-tree approach (especially in terms of min-cuts and min-paths) and of finite-sample hypothesis testing, leads to estimates of consumer and producer risks of a quality control procedure taking into account the internal design (functional diagram) of each device. As an example, a tuneable frequency multiplier is fully treated.