Empower Tip: Review Window and the Processing Method

In this tip we will continue with our series on Custom Fields and learn how to create one custom field to determine a sample pass/fail.

What if we have more than one criterion to determine if the sample passes or fails? What if we have multiple criteria for a system suitability test? Rather than having to look at multiple fields to determine if our sample passes or fails, let’s create one custom field to evaluate all of the important fields and return a pass/fail.

Let’s review the result from Tip 89. For sample A, we see the Ethyl Paraben peak has a %Area of 36.18%. What if our criterion was that the %Area for the peak of interest must be greater than or equal to 35% to pass?

Earlier in Tip 85, we saw that the percent of label claim for this sample failed as well. We will create one field which will evaluate both the percent of label claim and the %Area. To do this, we create a peak field, data type Boolean which multiplies the two expressions. Why? Each Boolean expression will return either a 1 or a 0. If both return a 1, 1 x 1 = 1 which is translated into ‘Pass’. If one returns a 0, 0 x 1 = 0 which is translated into ‘Fail’. We could have more than two Boolean expressions and as long as each one returns a 1, the sample passes. In this case, we multiply the %area test times a test which evaluates if the percent of label claim falls within a certain range.

We reprocess the data and see that Sample A passes.

Sample B fails since both the %Area fails and the percent of label claim is out of the range.

It’s that easy!