Book excerpt: In analytical chemistry and pharmaceutical technology attention is increasingly focussed on improving the quality of methods and products. This book aims at fostering the awareness of the potential of existing mathematical and statistical methods to improve this quality. It provides procedures and ideas on how to make a product or a method less sensitive to small variations in influencing factors. Major issues covered are robustness and stability improvement and ruggedness testing. General strategies and a theoretical introduction to these methods are described, and thorough overviews of methods used in both application areas and descriptions of practical applications are given.Features of this book:• Gives a good overview of mathematical and statistical methods used in two application areas, i.e. pharmaceutical technology and analytical chemistry• Illustrates the different approaches available to attain robustness• Gives ideas on how to use methods in practical situations.The book is intended for those who develop and optimize, and are responsible for the overall quality of, analytical methods and pharmaceutical technological products and procedures.