Week 3 Lab: Drop Test Plan
Write a realistic ISTA 3A test plan for a real product, and price out what a failed test would actually cost the company
8 March 2027
Before the lab#
Pick a real product you could plausibly ship — something you own, or something you’d buy online this week. You’ll test-plan it, not test it.
In the lab#
- Scope check — does your product fit ISTA 3A’s scope at all? Under 70kg, and one of standard / small / flat / elongated? If not, say so and move on; this is itself information about who this standard was written for.
- Pick your elements — from Monday’s six-part procedure, choose which you’d actually run for this product and which you’d skip. A textbook, a bottle of wine, and a flat-packed poster don’t need the same test plan; say why yours doesn’t.
- Price the failure — for each element you kept, state in one sentence what a failure there would cost: a refund, a re-ship, a damaged-goods writeoff, a liability claim, a grounded shipment. This is the number that justifies running the test at all.
Afterwards#
Swap plans with another group and try to find one test element they kept that you’d have skipped, or vice versa — and settle the disagreement with a cost argument, not a “better safe than sorry” one. “Better safe than sorry” is exactly the sustainability-flavoured hand-wave this course exists to replace with a number.
The spec
What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.
- you have picked one specific real product (not a generic "a box") and written a test plan naming which ISTA 3A elements you'd actually run against it, and which you'd skip, with a reason for each
- your plan states what a failed drop or vibration result would cost the company — a repair, a replacement, a refund, a recall, or a regulatory problem — not just "it would be bad"
- you can say whether your product even fits the standard's scope (the 70kg limit, the four package-type categories), and what you'd do if it didn't
Teaching team
- Idris Fenn — tutor