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Business Segment Information (Details) $ in Thousands	3 Months Ended		6 Months Ended
	Jul. 04, 2015 USD ($)	Jun. 28, 2014 USD ($)	Jul. 04, 2015 USD ($)	Jun. 28, 2014 USD ($)
Entity-Wide Revenue from External Customers [Line Items]
Number of operating segments			2
Number of reportable segments			1
Product sales	$ 332,036	$ 321,265	$ 634,909	$ 606,060
Service sales	162,704	160,536	320,235	306,249
Total net sales	494,740	481,801	955,144	912,309
Waters instrument systems [Member]
Entity-Wide Revenue from External Customers [Line Items]
Product sales	217,576	206,184	406,080	382,548
Chemistry [Member]
Entity-Wide Revenue from External Customers [Line Items]
Product sales	77,739	76,577	155,922	151,780
TA instrument systems [Member]
Entity-Wide Revenue from External Customers [Line Items]
Product sales	36,721	38,504	72,907	71,732
Waters service [Member]
Entity-Wide Revenue from External Customers [Line Items]
Service sales	146,917	145,075	289,898	277,117
TA service [Member]
Entity-Wide Revenue from External Customers [Line Items]
Service sales	$ 15,787	$ 15,461	$ 30,337	$ 29,132

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Number of operating segments. An operating segment is a component of an enterprise: (a) that engages in business activities from which it may earn revenues and incur expenses (including revenues and expenses relating to transactions with other components of the same enterprise), (b) whose operating results are regularly reviewed by the enterprise's chief operating decision maker to make decisions about resources to be allocated to the segment and assess its performance, and (c) for which discrete financial information is available. An operating segment may engage in business activities for which it has yet to earn revenues, for example, start-up operations may be operating segments before earning revenues.

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Number of segments reported by the entity. A reportable segment is a component of an entity for which there is an accounting requirement to report separate financial information on that component in the entity's financial statements.

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Aggregate revenue during the period from the sale of goods in the normal course of business, after deducting returns, allowances and discounts.

+ References

Reference 1: http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/presentationRef



-Publisher FASB



-Name Accounting Standards Codification



-Topic 225



-SubTopic 10



-Section S99



-Paragraph 2



-Subparagraph (SX 210.5-03.1(a))



-URI http://asc.fasb.org/extlink&oid=26872669&loc=d3e20235-122688



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Total revenue from sale of goods and services rendered during the reporting period, in the normal course of business, reduced by sales returns and allowances, and sales discounts.

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Reference 1: http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/presentationRef



-Publisher FASB



-Name Accounting Standards Codification



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