The poorest level of quality that the consumer is willing to tolerate in an independent lot. You want to design a sampling plan that rejects a particular lot of product at the RQL most of the time.
For example, you receive a shipment of microchips and your rejectable quality level (RQL) is 6.5%. Realizing that you won't always make the correct decision (sampling risk) you set the consumer's risk (beta) at 0.10. This means that at least 90% of the time you will reject a lot with a quality level of 6.5% or worse. At most 10% of the time you will accept the lot with a quality level of 6.5% or worse.
Also commonly known as lot tolerance percent defective (LTPD) and limiting quality (LQ).
While the RQL describes what the sampling plan will reject, the acceptable quality level (AQL) describes what the sampling plan will accept.