How do you determine the age and lot number of a column by its serial number? - WKB1148

ENVIRONMENT

• Waters columns
• Oasis
• SPE
• Sep-Pak

ANSWER

Example serial number: 444411333999 99
How to decode the serial number:

• First four digits (4444) = The gel lot (batch) of packing used to pack the column.
• Fifth digit (1) = Column packing location (3 = Wexford, Ireland; 1 = Taunton, Massachusetts)
• Sixth digit (1) = Last digit in the year column was packed (2011)
• Seventh, eighth, and ninth digits (333) = Day of the year in which column was packed (November 29)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

See the attached Spreadsheet.

Prior to 2005, Waters used a different lot numbering system (see below)

Example Serial Number: T01251A 14  (The lot # in this example is lot T01251)

The letter indicates manufacturing location.  In this case "T" represents Taunton, Massachusetts.

The first digit after the letter represents the last digit of year the column was manufactured. "0" indicates the year 2000 or 1990, for example.

The second, third and fourth digits after the letter, represents the day of the year the column was manufactured. In this case "125" equals day 125 in the year of manufacture.

The fifth digit after the letter represents the number of production runs for a given day.  The "1" in this example means this column was manufactured during production run number one on the date of manufature.

The next letter (in some cases two letters) (after the five digits) represents the packing station. In this example, there is only one letter "A" which means packing station A. Some serial numbers could contain a two-letter designation for packing station. 

The final two digits represent the sequential column number. In this example, the "14" means that this specific column was the fourteenth column packed during a particular production run.