Due to the changes in the global market, the chemical engineering community is urged to expand its activities from process design to product design and development and develop the relevant knowledge and processing techniques for high-value-added products. Product development involves the tasks of project management, market study, product design, prototyping, process design, feasibility study, engineering design, economic analysis, product launch and plant startup. However, these tasks and related activities are not organized systematically, resulting in inefficiencies in product design. There are an insufficient number of case studies to investigating the engineering sciences and know-how in detail for different types of products....[ Read more ]

Due to the changes in the global market, the chemical engineering community is urged to expand its activities from process design to product design and development and develop the relevant knowledge and processing techniques for high-value-added products. Product development involves the tasks of project management, market study, product design, prototyping, process design, feasibility study, engineering design, economic analysis, product launch and plant startup. However, these tasks and related activities are not organized systematically, resulting in inefficiencies in product design. There are an insufficient number of case studies to investigating the engineering sciences and know-how in detail for different types of products.

An integrative approach for chemical product design and development has been developed in this study, so that related tasks are put in proper perspective to minimize the amount of time, effort and money. It considers both business and technical issues. For former, objective-time chart, RAT²IO modules and workflow diagrams are used for project management. For the latter, the integration of experiments, modeling and synthesis expedites product conceptualization, prototyping and process design. The development of a skin-care cream is described to illustrate this approach and the tasks which chemical engineers are expected to play a role are discussed. The study further explores issues in market study, product design, prototyping and process design using a case study of designing a transdermal patch containing a traditional Chinese medicinal (TCM) tincture. Related experimental techniques for material selection, fabrication and performance tests for a reservoir type transdermal patch have been developed. In addition, we look into the design techniques for controlling a key product quality factor of a pharmaceutical product – purity. A workflow, consisting of experiments, modeling and synthesis, guides the design of the entire train of crystallization and downstream processing units. Lastly, the tasks of economic analysis for product design are using a case study of designing a TCM dietary supplement product. The approach for economic analysis takes into account customers' preference on product quality and economic considerations such as pricing, profit, market share, capital investment and operating cost. The activities needed to support business decision-making – identifying product form, estimating product cost, calculating financial metrics, and performing make-buy analysis – are discussed.