When Should You Book an Initial Production Inspection?

Book an Initial Production Inspection when the factory can give you an expected first-batch ready date—ideally before production starts. Plan the visit for around 5–10% production completion, with enough finished units available for the agreed checks. This is UTS’s planning range, not a universal inspection rule. Ask our team to confirm availability and the advance notice needed for your location and scope.

How We Prepare for Your IPI

For our Initial Production Inspection (IPI), we review your purchase order, specifications, approved sample and quality requirements to prepare a product-specific checklist. We also review the factory’s production schedule and first-batch samples during the visit.

Send these details with your proposed date:

• Factory address, site contact and order quantities by stock-keeping unit (SKU), such as each model, size or colour.
• Planned production start, finished-unit ready dates by SKU and expected daily output.
• Current approved specifications, drawing revision numbers and sample references.
• Required checks, equipment needs and previous defects to revisit.

Flag new materials, components, tooling or production-line changes so the inspection scope can address them.

When Is the Factory Ready?

Use expected readiness to arrange the booking, then obtain a dated factory update before the visit: finished quantities by SKU, missing components and test-equipment availability. Allow for curing, finishing and final assembly; the assembly start date alone does not establish when complete units can be checked.

If only materials are ready, ask our team whether a limited-scope visit is suitable. It cannot establish finished-product function. For required laboratory tests, confirm sample-ready and result dates separately; an IPI appointment does not mean those tests are complete.

How Quickly Will You Reach 5–10%?

For a hypothetical 10,000-unit order, 5–10% means 500–1,000 finished units. At an assumed output of 2,000 units per working day, that window falls within the first half-day of finished output.

To calculate elapsed working days, use ordered units × completion fraction ÷ daily finished output. Enter 0.05 for 5% or 0.10 for 10%.

The calculation assumes no starting finished stock and evenly accumulating finished output. Count from the start of finished-unit output, not assembly. For batch releases, use the actual batch-ready time. These are illustrative production times, not booking notice periods or verified factory capacity.

Agree a time to review the findings with the factory, including whether production will pause. The booking alone does not stop the line.

What If SKUs Start on Different Dates?

Suppose you order 1,000 units of SKU A and 9,000 of SKU B. If all of A is finished before B starts, the order is 10% complete overall: A is at 100% and B at 0%. In this hypothetical case, a visit booked for that point would be too late for an early-production check of A, though its finished units could still be inspected.

Get a ready date for each SKU before setting the visit dates. Separate visits may be needed. For a multi-SKU inspection, ask for the report to list each checked variant, the number of units inspected and any SKUs excluded.

What If the Date No Longer Fits?

If units or equipment are delayed, send us the revised ready date and affected checks. Confirm a new appointment with our team or agree a reduced scope with exclusions recorded. An unperformed check cannot be treated as passed.

If production has already started, send the current finished quantity by SKU and the remaining production dates. Don’t assume it is too late based on the start date alone. Our team can review whether an early visit still fits or a during-production check is more appropriate.

Confirm the Scope Before the Visit

Agree the planned inspection lot and sampling requirements when booking, then confirm the actual available quantities before the visit. The 5–10% production stage does not set the sample size. Where acceptance sampling is used, a random sample supports an accept-or-reject decision about the identified lot, not a guarantee that every unit is defect-free. [1] For a single-sampling plan based on defective units, agree the sample size and acceptance number—the maximum number of defective units allowed in that sample under the plan. [2]

Reserve any required final random inspection for finished goods later in the schedule. The IPI result does not cover units made after the visit.