Inspect items for damage or defects
Little of this can be handed to software today.
This happens in the physical world, so software agents do not touch it. Automation here means robotics and machinery, which is a different market from the one mapped on this site, on a much slower clock.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Physical, manual and inspection work |
| Jobs that do it | 11 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | None |
| O*NET activity | Inspecting Equipment, Structures, or Materials (4.A.1.b.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 11 occupations that perform it.
- Inspect personal or business property.
- Inspect returned books for condition and due-date status and compute any applicable fines.
- Inspect outgoing work for compliance with customers' specifications.
- Inspect and count items received and check them against invoices or other documents, recording shortages and rejecting damaged goods.
- Examine documents, materials, or products and monitor work processes to assess completeness, accuracy, and conformance to standards and specifications.
- Examine products or materials, parts, subassemblies, and packaging for damage, defects, or shortages, using specification sheets, gauges, and standards charts.
- Inspect mail machine output for defects and determine how to eliminate causes of any defects.
- Compute defect percentages or averages, using formulas and calculators.
- Inspect worn tires for faults, cracks, cuts, and nail holes, and to determine if tires are suitable for retreading.
- Inspect materials and products for defects, and to ensure conformance to specifications.
- Examine and inspect stock items for wear or defects, reporting any damage to supervisors.
- Inspect products and examination records to determine the number of defects per worker and the reasons for examiners' rejections.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Nothing on this site applies. Automation here is robotics and machinery, a different market on a much slower clock, and no software subscription moves it.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
11 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Appraisers of Personal and Business Property
- Cargo and Freight Agents
- Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers, and Weighers
- Library Assistants, Clerical
- Machine Feeders and Offbearers
- Mail Clerks and Mail Machine Operators, Except Postal Service
- Order Clerks
- Production, Planning, and Expediting Clerks
- Stockers and Order Fillers
- Tire Builders
- Weighers, Measurers, Checkers, and Samplers, Recordkeeping
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Inspect completed work or finished products”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.