You can create inspection plans for different uses (for example, model inspection, carrying out an audit, preliminary series inspection, goods receipt inspection, goods issue inspection, inspection of stock transfers, inspections in repetitive manufacturing.

The R/3 System uses task lists as a planning and processing tool. In the R/3 System, you can inspect with or without a task list. If you use a task list, you can include inspection specifications in the production processes. Different task list types are used for planning purposes in the R/3 system, depending on the application component:

• In production (application component PP)

• Inspection plans
• Reference operation sets

The inspection plan is related to the rate routing and the master recipe. These task list types only differ slightly, with respect to the inspection planning functions.

For inspections in production, you do not need to additionally process inspection plans. The inspection characteristics are defined in routings (inspection during production), rate routings, master recipes (inspection during production in the process industry) or maintenance task lists (calibration inspection).

When you create an inspection plan, you can copy or link to a reference operation set (describes frequently-used operations but is not assigned to a material).

• In the inspection plan header, you can define general data, (for example, planner group, task list usage, task list status, information for dynamic modification, inspection points, physical-sample drawing).
• You can assign several materials to an inspection plan. You can create several inspection plans with different inspection operations or inspection characteristics for a material or a combination of material, vendor and manufacturer, or material and customer.
• You can assign an inspection plan to several vendors or customers.
• Plans are subject to engineering change management. The system manages separate change statuses for each structural element in the plan. Therefore, you can check at any time how a plan looked at a particular key date.