Case Study: Supelco achieves higher HPLC column pass rates with Minitab

Discovering Peak Performance at Supelco with Minitab

Supelco, a manufacturer of chromatography products and HPLC columns for the pharmaceutical industry, needed to improve the performance of its Discovery line after pass rates during testing fell to 80 percent, well below its 95 percent goal. To address the issue, the company turned to Minitab and continuous improvement methods to identify the root causes of column failures and optimize production.

Using Minitab’s Capability Sixpack and Design of Experiments (DOE) tools, Supelco screened key factors such as packing pressure, testing equipment, slurry mixture, and machinery to determine which variables had the greatest impact. Minitab helped the team pinpoint pressure and the type of quality assurance instrument as the most important factors, leading to a new packing pressure of 7,000 psi and an optimized testing system; as a result, pass rates rose to more than 99 percent, Cpk improved from -0.01 to 1.74, and the company reduced material and labor costs.

Supelco

John Rumbaugh

Production Manager