Calibration Continuity: Effortlessly Transferring NIR Calibration Data

• 📂Case Overview: A client has an outdated NIR instrument and fears they will soon lose the calibration data they have spent years creating. The detectives offer a simple solution that will ensure a seamless shift.

The detectives arrive in the office to find Miss Mapple looking confused and surrounded by pots, pans, dictionaries, and encyclopedias. “Isinglass? Sweetmeats? Trenchers?” Miss Mapple mutters to herself. Upon hearing these words, the detectives look as confused as Miss Mapple, apart from Shallot Holmes, who seems to be wracking his brain. “Did I hear you say sweetmeats?” asks Holmes. “Yes! Do you know what they are?” asks Miss Mapple in desperation. “I’ve not heard that word for a very long time. I believe they’re referred to as candied fruits nowadays. You know, sugar-covered nuts, bonbons, sticks of candy, that type of thing,” says Holmes. Miss Mapple thanked Holmes and excitedly started jotting in her notebook.

Hearing mention of bonbons and sweet things and seeing all the pots and pans, Cornlumbo, excited at the prospect of Miss Mapple baking something delicious for them, asks her what she is up to. “It was meant to be a surprise,” says Miss Mapple before explaining what she was doing. 

Miss Mapple had been sorting through her family's belongings on the weekend and had discovered an old cookbook that belonged to her great-great-grandmother. Her long-lost relative had hand-written almost a hundred recipes in an old, tatty-looking leather-bound book. With a desire to reach into the past, Miss Mapple had hoped to recreate one of the recipes and share it with the detectives. “I arrived early this morning, thinking I’d have enough time to do some baking before you all arrived, but these recipes are more complicated than I thought,” she says. 

Eggcule Poirot, a keen chef, is eager to assist, “We Belgians are renowned for our cooking abilities. Is there anything I can help with?” he asks. “I’m sure I could manage the cooking if only I could understand all these strange terms. Like here, in this recipe, it says I need sallet oil and a gill of ale, and I can’t for the life of me work out what a gill of ale is, let alone what sallet oil refers to,” says Miss Mapple. 

“Do you mind if I borrow your book for a while? As I think I have an idea,” says Nancy Beef. Intrigued, Miss Mapple hands Nancy her great-great-grandmother’s old recipe book. Nancy takes the book and heads to the office scanner with her laptop.

As Nancy gets to work, Shallot Holmes explains a case that has been brought to his attention. Holmes had received a call from a long-standing client who ran a cheese factory. For years, the client’s secret to consistently perfecting the delicate flavors of their cheeses lay in a trusty old Near-Infrared (NIR) spectroscopy instrument. The device had become an extension of their senses, guiding them through the subtleties of fat and moisture content like a culinary compass. The distraught client had been informed that the manufacturer of their trusted NIR machine had announced the discontinuation of the machine and the spare parts that they had relied on over the years. The client was now faced with losing years of calibration data – essentially the soul of their operation. 

“Can’t the client just make the parts themselves,” suggests Cornlumbo. Holmes explains that NIR instruments are pretty complex, and creating replacement parts would be no easy task. “Then surely they need to buy a new machine,” says Eggcule Poirot. “That would certainly solve the problem of the outdated equipment and the lack of spare parts, but it’s the calibration data that the client is so worried about. They have spent years working on their calibrations, and all this would have to be done again; they have more calibrations than recipes in Miss Mapple’s old cookbook,” explains Holmes.

As the detectives ponder a solution, Nancy Beef comes running back from the printer holding a massive stack of paper. “What’s that?” asks Miss Mapple. “That’s your new cookbook, all updated for the 21st century,” says Nancy. Miss Mapple scours the pages. Where the original recipe had said, “Take two pounds of beef, a handful of sweetmeats, a gill of ale, and season with sallet oil,” the new document said, “Use 900 grams of ground beef, 100 grams of candied orange peel, 120ml of brown ale, and season with two tablespoons of olive oil.”

“Isinglass” had been replaced with “gelatine”, and a “trencher” was defined as “a flat round bread used as a plate that could be eaten with sauce at the end of the meal or given as alms to the poor”. Miss Mapple couldn’t believe her eyes. “Nancy, how did you do this? It would have taken me ages to use my dictionaries and encyclopedias,” she asks. Nancy explains how she scanned the cookbook and used a program to convert the old handwriting into a Word document that she uploaded to some AI software. “All I did was ask the AI to scan the document for any outdated words, phrases, or ingredients and to either add a definition or a modern ingredient that could be used as a replacement. In a matter of minutes, it made the necessary document changes, and I printed out the results.” 

The detectives looked at this modified document and then at each other, thinking the same thing. Is there a way the client could achieve something similar with their vast database of calibrations? After a bit of research online, the detectives had what they needed. One of the latest NIR instruments has an auto-calibration feature called AutoCal, which would be very handy for the client in this simple process. 

• 1.    Measure at least 30 samples on both the old and new instruments.
• 2.    Label the samples with the exact same name.
• 3.    Export the samples and send them to the chemometrics experts.
• 4.    Receive the new calibrations. 

Once this has been done, the AutoCal software can be used to strengthen the bridge created between the old and new equipment, and the client can use their treasured calibrations as before. Holmes immediately rang the client, passed on the information, and congratulated the detectives on a job well done. “But we’re not quite finished yet, though, are we?” says Cornlumbo. “What more is there to do?” asks Holmes. “I still haven’t had my sweetmeats! Let’s get baking!” shouts Cornlumbo to the sound of laughter.