品質檢驗站的設置有兩種基本策略。第一種是“分散檢驗\"，把檢驗站分散在生產線上的重要工作站前後。第二種是“集中檢驗，檢驗站只設置在最後一個工作站之後。這篇論文用模擬模式來衡量這兩種策略的績效。為了彌補前人研究之不足，這篇論文著重在衡量因為產品品質不良所引起的“隱藏性生產成本”，包括過期定單比率和存貨成本。結果顯示有兩種分散檢驗的方式可降低這些隱藏性成本：把檢驗站設置在瓶頸工作站之前或不良品比率高的工作站之後。另一方面，分散檢驗的好處和生產情況關係密切。當整體的不良品比率高時，或小批量生產時，或兩者皆是時，最適合用上述的分散檢驗方法。

We investigate two strategies of inspection station location, distributed inspection and final inspection, in a general production system with demand variations and yield loss variations. We use weeks of past-due orders and weeks of inventory as performance measures. We also consider the value of defective units. The results show that we can improve system performance by placing inspection stations before bottlenecks or after workcenters with high yield loss. But the advantages of the distributed inspection depend on environ-mental factors, such as total process yield loss and lo t sizes.