Product and Process Design

Industrial innovation can be tremendously accelerated by incorporating design activities throughout the innovation process to drive projects from early-stage idea generation to commercial implementation.

Innovation projects must be effective and efficient. Effective means that a need is fulfilled. Efficiency means that the novel product and/or technology require minimal resources and that the innovation project is carried out with minimal effort, time, and cost.

These innovation projects can only achieve all these goals by having trained and experienced people skilled to execute innovation projects. Trained people are recruited from universities and have completed the appropriate programs and courses.

Product and Process Design: Driving Innovation by authors Jan Harmsen, Andre de Haan, and Ir. Pieter Swinkels focuses on the importance of design in all innovation stages for both processes and products and also how to perform these designs. The authors apply these in detail on life cycle, value chain, industrial implementation, processes, unit operations, chemistry, equipment and operations toward sustainable processes and products.

This text provides a practical guide for all R&D people on how to innovate in the chemical industry.

Jan Harmsen worked over 30 years at Shell, obtaining his industrial experience in research, development, design, start-up, operation and de-bottlenecking of chemical and biological processes. He has been an independent consultant on the subject of sustainable process innovation since 2010. After finding his website, often individuals from any of the process industries world-wide buy one of his books and then subsequently decide that they want his advice. In this way, he has assessed the risks of a large innovation project, moderated brainstorm sessions, evaluated process alternatives, and provided courses on sustainable design, and process scale-up for industrial engineers and for students. In addition, Harmen taught courses on sustainable chemical technology at Delft and Groningen University from 1997-2013.

Prof. André de Haan currently combines a position as principal technologist at the Cosun Innovation Centre with a position as part-time professor at Delft University of Technology. After finishing his PhD, he held various positions at DSM (1991-1999), held the chair of separation technology at the University of Twente (1999-2006) and the chair in process systems engineering at the Technical University of Eindhoven (2006-2010). He worked for Corbion-Purac as a corporate scientist in process technology (2010-2016), initially in combination with a part-time position at the Technical University of Eindhoven (2010-2013), which he exchanged for a post at Delft University of Technology in 2014. Since 2002 he has been editor for the journal, Separation and Purification Technology. He authored the books Industrial Separation Processes and Process Technology, both published by De Gruyter.

Ir. Pieter Swinkels is director of the post MSc PDEng designer programs in chemical and biochemical product and process design at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). After obtaining his ir. (MSc) degree at Technical University Eindhoven, with specialization in bioprocess engineering at TU Delft, he was employed by Unilever. He was a member of the R&D team that invented novel detergent powder formulations and manufacturing processes (1986-1991). Within Unilever s specialty chemicals businesses (later part of National Starch & Chemical Company and ICI) he worked in various positions in manufacturing, product/process design & development, and as divisional process development manager (1992-2001). In 2001, he moved to TU Delft as Asst. Professor of product and process design and engineering, and became PDEng program director. He develops chemical and biochemical product/process design methodologies, which he teaches and applies in MSc and PDEng design projects in cooperation with companies from his extensive industrial network.