Small scale compaction studies which utilise equipment representative of commercial scale tablet presses can be used to develop process understanding of pharmaceutical formulations using minimal quantities of material. In this study the scalability of compressibility (solid fraction vs. compaction pressure), tabletability (tensile strength vs. compaction pressure), compactibility (tensile strength vs. solid fraction) and ejection shear stress was examined over an eight-fold range in tablet size. Tablets of two representative commercially manufactured formulations were compressed and compared using a small scale compaction press and large scale industrial press. Different tablet sizes and shapes were produced from the two types of press. One formulation was manufactured by direction compression and the other by wet granulation. Generally, good agreement was found across the scales for all the measures assessed. In addition, the measurement of ejection shear stress data on the small scale was able to accurately predict tablet failure on commercial rotary presses. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.