This paper integrates elements of Information Economics, Quality Contr
ol, Portfolio Selection and Decision Theory into an approach to facili
tate the selection of an attribute sampling plan for a lot subject to
inspection. The optimal selection is based on two criteria: the expect
ed payoff and its standard deviation. Quality sampling plans are intro
duced as information structures, and ranked by the two criteria. The p
aper shows that different organizations should prefer different plans
according to their strategies and preferences. The paper provides meth
ods to rank order different sampling plans by an economical criterion
as opposed to the commonly accepted pure statistical criterion.