52 FAIMA Business & Management Journal Obtained Value Through Quality Inspection Fiorenzo Franceschini, Maurizio Galetto, Gianfranco Genta, Domenico Augusto Maisano Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy Abstract * Correspondence to Fiorenzo Franceschini: fiorenzo.franceschini@polito.it The design of quality-inspection procedures may be critical for short-run productions. In this paper, a probabilistic model representing the process propensity to produce defects is adopted, together with two indicators related to the effectiveness and cost of inspections. The combined use of the indicators allows to support in a practical way the selection of the more appropriate inspection procedures. A case study concerning the production of front fenders of a luxury car is extensively dealt with. Keywords: quality inspection, short-run, inspection effectiveness, inspection cost, car fender Introduction The manufacturing of complex products is typically organized into several steps: ac- quisition of raw materials, processing, as- sembly, functional testing etc. Quality in- spections are usually performed to check whether specifications and functional re- quirements are satisfied and to identify de- fects and/or anomalies. Inspection can be governed by strict or non-strict rules (e.g. periodic controls, fixed-percentage control etc.) and organized through well-defined or heuristic procedures. The inspection strategies are significantly affected by the production volume. In the case of mass production, Statistical Process Control (SPC) techniques can be straight- forwardly applied (Montgomery, 2013). On the other hand, in the case of productions of single units, small-sized lots (i.e. the so-called short-runs) or in the start-up of a process, most of the SPC techniques are „The time will come when people will recognize that my paintings are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.” Vincent van Gogh