ISO 28591:2017 specifies sequential sampling plans and procedures for inspection by attributes of discrete items.

The plans are indexed in terms of the producer's risk point and the consumer's risk point. Therefore, they can be used not only for the purposes of acceptance sampling, but for a more general purpose of the verification of simple statistical hypotheses for proportions.

The purpose of this International Standard is to provide procedures for sequential assessment of inspection results that may be used to induce the supplier, through the economic and psychological pressure of non-acceptance of lots of inferior quality, to supply lots of a quality having a high probability of acceptance. At the same time, the consumer is protected by a prescribed upper limit to the probability of accepting lots of poor quality.

ISO 28591:2017 provides sampling plans that are applicable, but not limited, to inspection in different fields, such as:

- end items,

- components and raw materials,

- operations,

- materials in process,

- supplies in storage,

- maintenance operations,

- data or records, and

- administrative procedures.

ISO 28591:2017 contains sampling plans for inspection by attributes of discrete items. The sampling plans may be used when the extent of nonconformity is expressed either in terms of proportion (or percent) nonconforming items or in terms of nonconformities per item (per 100 items).

The sampling plans are based on the assumption that nonconformities occur randomly and with statistical independence. There may be good reasons to suspect that one nonconformity in an item could be caused by a condition also likely to cause others. If so, it would be better to consider the items just as conforming or not, and ignore multiple nonconformities.

The sampling plans from this International Standard should primarily be used for the analysis of samples taken from processes. For example, they may be used for the acceptance sampling of lots taken from a process that is under statistical control. However, they may also be used for the acceptance sampling of an isolated lot when its size is large, and the expected fraction nonconforming is small (significantly smaller than 10 %).

In the case of the acceptance sampling of continuing series of lots, the system of sequential sampling plans indexed by acceptance quality limit (AQL) for lot-by-lot inspection published in ISO 2859‑5 should be applied.