ISO 13448-1:2005 provides guidelines specifying the organizational principles of acceptance sampling in situations where the contract or the legislation provides for successive inspection to be carried out by different parties: the supplier, the customer and/or a third party.

These guidelines are designed for inspection of populations of any product supplied or delivered in discrete items in lots. They are applicable to supplier inspection (final inspection, product certification upon supplier's request), customer inspection (incoming inspection, audit inspection, acceptance sampling), and third-party inspection (certification of product, inspection and supervision for observance of International Standard requirements, quality inspection carried out at the supplier, and/or customer, request), where the quality levels and the lot acceptability criteria are specified unilaterally by the supplier or contractually by the supplier and the customer.

These guidelines are also applicable to situations when only one sampling inspection is actually needed.

The guidelines provided can be applied in developing standards on acceptance sampling for standard inspection models, specific items or quality levels, as well as in developing contracts, specifications and instructions. In contractual use of the APP, the parties concerned should acknowledge in the contract that they approve of its principles (also by referring to the present guidelines). The parties may also provide for the use of the APP in disputes and arbitration.