In this paper we described an approach to automation of visual inspection of solder joint defects of SMC(Surface Mounted Components) on PCBs(Printed Circuit Board) by using neural network and fuzzy rule-based classification method. Inherently the surface of the solder joints is curved tiny and specular reflective it induces difficulty of taking good image of the solder joints. And the shape of the solder joints tends to greatly vary with the soldering condition and the shapes are not identical to each other even though the solder joints belong to a set of the same soldering quality. This problem makes it difficult to classify the solder joints according to their qualities. Neural network and fuzzy rule-based classification method is proposed to effi-ciently make human-like classification criteria of the solder joint shapes. The performance of the proposed approach is tested on numerous samples of commercial computer PCB boards and compared with the results of the human inspector performance and the conventional Kohonen network.