| Skill | What it means | Level needed |
|---|
| Safety | Works safely in and around production: wears the required PPE, recognizes machine, chemical and lifting hazards on the floor, follows lockout/tagout and hazard communication rules, and keeps the inspection area clean and orderly. | |
| Shop Math | Does the arithmetic the job runs on: fractions and decimals, inch-to-metric conversion, significant digits and rounding, percentages, and enough geometry and trigonometry to work out hole locations, angles and tolerance limits. | |
| Blueprint Reading | Reads an engineering drawing well enough to find what has to be checked: title block, revision level, scale, views and sections, notes, dimensions, and the tolerance that applies to each one. | |
| GD&T | Interprets ASME Y14.5 geometric callouts (datums, flatness, perpendicularity, profile, runout and position), identifies the datum reference frame, sets the part up to it, and calculates position and bonus tolerance. | |
| Hand Gages | Takes an accurate variable measurement with hand instruments (outside, inside and depth micrometers, calipers, rules and dial indicators), reads the scale without parallax error, and repeats the reading to prove it. | |
| Attribute Gages | Checks features with go/no-go tooling such as pin gages, thread plug and ring gages, snap gages, flush pins and part-specific check fixtures, recording a pass or fail rather than a number. | |
| Transfer Gages | Uses feel-based transfer tools (small-hole ball gages, telescoping gages and spring calipers) to capture an inside dimension and then read it on a micrometer without disturbing the setting. | |
| Surface Plate Work | Sets a part up on a granite surface plate and measures heights, squareness, parallelism and angles using a height gage, indicators, V-blocks, angle plates, parallels and a sine bar. | |
| Optical Comparator | Stages a part on an optical comparator, focuses and lights it correctly, and measures profiles, radii, thread forms and small features against an overlay chart or the digital readout. | |
| CMM Operation | Loads a part into an existing fixture, runs a CMM program someone else wrote, confirms the alignment picked up the right datums, and reads and hands off the dimensional report. | |
| Surface Finish | Measures and judges surface texture, reading Ra with a portable profilometer and comparing machined surfaces against finish comparison plates. | |
| Visual Inspection | Looks a part over against a written workmanship standard and boundary samples, catching nicks, burrs, scratches, tool marks, burns, porosity, contamination and wrong or missing identification markings, and manages fatigue and distraction so the tenth part gets the same look as the first. | |
| Materials & Processes | Knows how the part in front of them was made (machined, formed, welded, cast, molded, soldered or coated) and what defects each of those processes typically leaves behind. | |
| Inspection Stages | Knows which inspection applies where (receiving, first article, in-process, final and source) and works to the inspection plan or control plan written for that stage. | |
| Sampling Plans | Pulls the right sample from a lot using the sampling plan on the job (lot size, sample size, acceptance number and AQL) and knows when the plan calls for 100 percent inspection instead. | |
| Gage Selection & Care | Picks the right instrument for the tolerance using the ten-to-one rule, allows for temperature and shop environment, and cleans, handles and stores gages so they hold their accuracy. | |
| Calibration Awareness | Checks the calibration sticker and due date before using any gage, pulls and quarantines anything out of calibration, and understands traceability and what has to happen to product that was measured with a bad gage. | |
| Gage R&R Basics | Understands what bias, repeatability and reproducibility mean and can serve as one of the appraisers in a gage R&R study that someone else runs. | |
| SPC & Statistics | Calculates mean, range and standard deviation, plots and reads X-bar and R, I-MR and attribute control charts, tells control limits from specification limits, and stops and escalates when the chart shows a run, a trend or an out-of-control point. | |
| Testing Methods | Runs the routine physical tests the shop needs (hardness, torque, leak, pressure, count and weight checks) and recognizes when a part has to go out for nondestructive testing. | |
| Nonconformance Handling | Tags, segregates and writes up material that does not meet spec, grades the defect as critical, major or minor, tells the operator and supervisor in a way that gets the problem fixed rather than argued, and routes the report to the material review board for disposition. | |
| Inspection Records | Fills out the inspection report completely and legibly, records as-found dimensions rather than just pass or fail, stamps acceptance only for characteristics actually checked, and corrects an entry the right way with a single line-out, initial and date. | |
| Traceability | Keeps lot, heat, serial and date-code identity attached to material all the way through inspection, applies FIFO, shelf-life and age control, and checks certificates of compliance and analysis against what the job actually requires. | |
| Quality System Basics | Knows what the quality system requires of them day to day: where the controlled procedure and current revision live, what a first article or PPAP package is for, and what an internal auditor is going to ask to see. | |
| Corrective Action | Takes part in containing a quality problem and finding its cause using 5 Whys, a fishbone diagram or an 8D, and supports the fix through error-proofing and 5S at the inspection station. | |
Oregon publishes ten employability skills, the same statewide. Tick the three that matter most for this job.