ASTM Continues Conversion of Military Acceptance Standards

(ASTM: West Conshohocken, PA) -- ASTM International Committee 11 on Quality and Statistics is continuing the conversion process of popular military acceptance standards based on Military Standard 105E, Sampling Procedures and Tables for Inspection by Attributes.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) no longer publishes acceptance sampling standards, although several of these DoD documents have been used as the basis for International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards, with some technical content being changed. However, because many users felt that the documents were still useful in their original form, Subcommittee E11.30 on Statistical Quality Control is currently working on preserving them as ASTM standards.

The latest approved standard in the conversion series is ASTM E2696—"Practice for Life and Reliability Testing Based on the Exponential Distribution." ASTM E2696 is an adaptation of the Quality Control and Reliability Handbook H-108—"Sampling Procedures and Tables for Life and Reliability Testing (Based on Exponential Distribution)," which was published by the United States government printing office in 1960.

“ASTM E2696 was prepared to meet a growing need for the use of standard sampling procedures and tables for life and reliability testing in government procurement, supply, and maintenance quality control operations as well as in research and development activities where applicable,” says Dean Neubauer, senior engineering associate at Corning Inc. and vice chair of E11.30. “Users should find this practice to be particularly helpful in their efforts to determine reliability conformance to customer needs.”

Neubauer notes that ASTM E2696 is a companion to ASTM E2555—"Practice for Factors and Procedures for Applying the MIL-STD-105 Plans in Life and Reliability Inspection."

“ASTM E2555 presents a procedure and related tables of factors for adapting E2234 [Practice for Sampling a Stream of Product by Attributes Indexed by AQL] sampling plans to acceptance inspection when the item quality of interest is life length or reliability,” says Neubauer. “Factors are provided for three alternative criteria for lot evaluation: mean life, hazard rate, and reliable life. E2234 is the ASTM adaptation of Military Standard 105E.”

With the approval of ASTM E2696, E11.30 is turning its attention to a conversion of Military Standard 414—"Sampling Procedures and Tables for Inspection by Variables for Percent Defective." The subcommittee welcomes participation in its conversion project and other standards developing activities.

ASTM International welcomes and encourages participation in the development of its standards. ASTM’s open consensus process, using advance internet-based standards development tools, ensures worldwide access for all interested individuals.

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