Abstract: Trace cross-contamination in mixtures or preforms of plasticized ceramic-forming powder mixtures, arising for example in manufacturing facilities where components of one ceramic product being manufactured can contaminate mixtures for another product to be manufactured, are controlled by one or more of: the targeted decontamination of shared production lines, rapid trace analysis of the mixtures to establish the presence and/or concentration levels of contaminants, the application of statistical models to project final product properties based on the analyzed concentrations, and decisional analysis of appropriate corrective actions based on the statistical projections.