Inspection and test plans and quality control plans

An inspection and test plan lists, in manufacturing sequence, every inspection and test activity, the reference document and acceptance criteria, the record produced, and the involvement of each party: supplier, buyer and third-party inspector. Involvement is defined as hold (H), witness (W), review (R) or surveillance (S).

QUALITAS TR prepares ITPs from your specification, reviews ITPs submitted by suppliers, and then implements them: notifying, attending and recording each intervention point. For series production the equivalent document is a quality control plan or control plan.

Without an agreed ITP, inspections are improvised: the inspector arrives too late to see the weld root, a pressure test happens before the buyer is notified, or records are missing at the end. An ITP agreed before production prevents those gaps.

The ITP also controls cost. Hold points are reserved for activities where the buyer must be present; the rest can be witness or review, so inspection effort goes where risk is highest.

Most ITPs reference the product codes named in the specification, for example ISO 5817 for weld quality levels or EN 10204 for material certificate types. ISO 10005 provides guidance for quality plans, of which the ITP is a key part.

We maintain ITP templates for common equipment types, which shortens preparation and makes reports consistent across suppliers. The ITP below shows a typical sequence for a fabricated assembly.