Visual Inspection of Circuit Boards: Effect of Gender, Age, Defect type, and Defect Proportion

Visual inspection of printed circuit boards was evaluated through a simulated experiment. Photographs of circuit boards were scanned into a PC and the images were manipulated using a Visual Basic program. The visual inspection performance measured reaction time in seconds and accuracy by measuring the number of incorrect responses given. The independent variables studied in this research were age, gender, defect type, board size, inspection pace, and proportion of defects. Forty subjects participated in this experiment. In summary, the study showed that defect proportion, defect type, age and gender do influence both inspection time and inspection accuracy. Perhaps the most interesting result is that rate of false alarm (decision 2) and misses (decision 1) depend on defect type and proportion. This has interesting ramification for quality professionals.