What is Acceptable Quality Level (AQL)?
The term AQL stands for acceptable quality level or acceptance quality level. It is one of the most used terms in garment industry when it comes in consideration to quality.
It should be noted here that, most of the acceptance decisions of export shipments are made on the basis of AQL based random sampling plans. To ensure the right quality products, an AQL chart has to follow during quality inspection of apparel which varies even buyer to buyer.
Acceptable Quality Level (AQL) refers to the maximum number of defective items that could be considered accepted during the random sampling of a pre-shipment inspection. It is expressed in a percentage (%) number of average defective items where average defective item is the multiple result of total number of defective items found during inspection and total number of items were inspected.
AQL in Garment Inspection
The faults or defects which are found during a garment inspection are mainly classified into 3 categories:
- Critical: Must be 100% accurate. There is no range.
- Major: Normally 2.5%
- Minor: Normally 4%
Please refer to the AQL table and better to know the sample size, number of defective items were acceptable for make a decision with your shipment, also you can refer to our sample report for the AQL used