Product design

We respond to a request to examine the area of product design and its impact on chemical engineering. We focus on how we are educating our undergraduates and deliberately adopt a controversial stand. Examples of products requiring chemical engineering concepts are new drugs, a new tape that one can remove without peeling off paint, computer chips and an oxygen-enriching device. We find more of our students involved in product design, both in the traditional chemical industry, where the move to high value added chemicals is occurring, and in start-up companies. There are teaching materials on product design from other disciplines, and Cussler and Moggridge have an upcoming text on chemical product design. Product design requires we spend considerable effort ill defining what is to be designed and how we shall measure success of the design, activities we as a discipline de-emphasize in our current process design course. We find a need for very diverse views when designing products, often requiring we team up with people having backgrounds in such fields as fine arts, business, social sciences and other engineering disciplines. A more detailed look at product design activities allows us to point at some of the tools that are useful for this activity. One of our suggestions is that product design may be a better capstone activity as it brings together the students' entire educational experiences and not just their chemical engineering educational experiences. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.