ISO 3951-2:2013 specifies an acceptance sampling system of single sampling plans for inspection by variables. It is indexed in terms of the acceptance quality limit (AQL) and is of a technical nature, aimed at users who are already familiar with sampling by variables or who have complicated requirements. (A more introductory treatment is given in ISO 3951-1.)

The objectives of the methods laid down in ISO 3951-2:2013 are to ensure that lots of an acceptable quality have a high probability of acceptance and that the probability of not accepting inferior lots is as high as practicable. This is achieved by means of the switching rules, which provide the following:

• automatic protection to the consumer (by means of a switch to tightened inspection or discontinuation of sampling inspection) should a deterioration in quality be detected;
• an incentive (at the discretion of the responsible authority) to reduce inspection costs (by means of a switch to a smaller sample size) should consistently good quality be achieved.

In ISO 3951-2:2013, the acceptability of a lot is either implicitly or explicitly determined from an estimate of the percentage of nonconforming items in the process, based on a random sample of items from the lot.

ISO 3951-2:2013 is intended for application to a continuing series of lots of discrete products all supplied by one producer using one production process. If there are different producers or production processes, ISO 3951-2:2013 is applied to each one separately.