The Integration of Process and Product Design

The current chemical engineering curriculum emphasizes product engineering, which was appropriate in an era when we had many large-volume and long-lived products, which needed a continuous process of cost reduction. Today, in the rapidly growing products of polymers, biomedical devices, and information material, the products tend to be smallvolume and short-lived, which needed continuous improvements in product properties and customer appeal. The study of molecular structure property relations is the principal intellectual tools in product design. In principle, product design is concerned with the question "what would have the desired properties", and product design is concerned with the question "how to make it". In practice, there should be a strong integration between the two in creating a new or improved product. Traditional process design concentrated on the meter scale of process equipments, and the hundred-meter scale of plants. In the future, chemical engineering design must also integrate the complexities involved from the nanometer scale of molecules to the ten thousand kilometer scale of global environment and sustainability.