Product design cost consequences

To improve customer satisfaction and business competitiveness, companies need to reduce the levels of non-conformance and attendant failure costs associated with poor product design and development. Attention needs to be focused on the quality and reliability of the design as early as possible in the product development process. This can be achieved by understanding the potential for variability in design parameters and the likely failure consequences in order to reduce the overall risk. The effective use of tools and techniques for designing for quality and reliability can provide this necessary understanding to reduce failure costs. 

Unlike the majority of bulk chemicals, most pharmaceuticals are very complex organic molecules that have to be constructed using multiple synthetic steps, often involving the isolation and purification of intermediate products. As a consequence, process efficiency has historically been very low [28]. In recent years, driven by both cost and sustainability issues, the research pharmaceutical companies have become industry leaders in the introduction of Green Chemistry and technology techniques into their process design. The implementation of environmental legislation such as this directive provides a further stimulus. 

The Nafion membrane, for instance, has shown good performance in fuel cells but has certain limitations, i.e., it has poor ionic conductivity at low humidity and is available at an expensive rate of 500 /m. The costs for Nafion , for example, become attractive only at high production voliunes [3]. Consequently, the search for new membrane materials with low cost and the required electrochemical characteristics, along with performances matching those of Nafion , is continuing and has become the most focused research area in the design of polymer electrolyte fuel cells. 

Except for perhaps the manufacture of cocoa butter substitutes, enzymatic interesterification processes have been confined to laboratories and pilot plants. The reasons are partially due to the relatively low value of products from these processes and more importantly to the many difriculties in solving the engineering problems of bioreactor designs for efficient, continuous processes. Application of biotechnology and computer aided techniques in bioreactor designs are consequently used to find solutions to these problems. The ultimate aim is to produce cost effident process designs for manufacturing products of even subtle value at competitive production costs to chemical catalysis. 

A first obvious consequence of such considerations is that we should not only look at the costs of the product from an economic point of view, but that we must consider the costs of the production process in a broader sense. We must take into account the raw materials used, the amount of energy invested and the possibility to design alternatives, more environmentally friendly processes. In other words, we should not only look at the desired product, but we must consider the total life cycle of the product The design of a production process taking into account these aspects is often referred to as integral life cycle management. 

The design of production plants for the manufacture of the three categories of product varies considerably. Fine chemicals are usually produced in batch reactors, which may also be used for the production of a variety of similar products. Fine chemicals usually have demanding product quality specifications and, consequently, a significant fraction of the production costs are involved in product purification and testing. Intermediate volume chemicals have less rigorous quality specifications than fine chemicals and are usually manufactured in product-specific-plants, either as batch or continuous flow processes. Bulk chemical production plants usually operate continuous flow processes... 

Kvaerner Chemetics have developed a novel, patented process [1] for the removal of multivalent anions from concentrated brine solutions. The prime market for this process is the removal of sodium sulphate from chlor-alkali and sodium chlorate brine systems. The sulphate ion in a brine solution can have a detrimental effect on ion-exchange membranes used in the production of chlorine and sodium hydroxide consequently tight limits are imposed on the concentration of sulphate ions in brine. As brine is continuously recycled from the electrolysers back to the saturation area, progressively more and more sulphate ions are dissolved and build up quickly in concentration to exceed the allowable process limits. A number of processes have been designed to remove sulphate ions from brine. Most of these methods are either high in capital or operating cost [2] or have large effluent flows. 

Process Reliability Simulation VIP The process reliability simulation VIP is the use of reliability, availability, and maintainability (RAM) computer simulation modeling of the process and the mechanical reliability of the facility. A principal goal is to optimize the engineering design in terms of life cycle cost, thereby maximizing the project s potential profitability. The objective is to determine the optimum relationships between maximum production rates and design and operational factors. Process reliability simulation is also applied for safety purposes, since it considers the consequences of specific equipment failures and failure modes. 

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