Development of flexible and efficient strategies for optimizing chromatographic separations.

The intensive research in chemometrics is resulting in continuous development of new concepts and optimization methods. The practical chromatographic optimization examples described in this paper highlight the importance of developing efficient and flexible optimization strategies, which are adapted to the (complex) separation problems encountered in the real chromatographic world. The availability of efficient and user-friendly software should contribute to a more systematic use of chemometrical approaches. Two primordial aspects are discussed in more details: (1) the selection of adequate optimization criteria and (2) the optimum robustness.