Product Design and Engineering in Chemical Engineering: Past, Present State, and Future

Product design and engineering (PDE), originally heralded as a new paradigm of chemical engineering, aims to define new and/or improved products based on customer needs and/or new technologies. A comprehensive discussion of PDE as a building block for chemical engineering education, research, and practice is still lacking, preventing a broader impact on academic and industry realities more and more concerned with the "knowledge economy". The purpose of the present paper was to contribute to the mitigation of this gap by presenting the results of the EFCE Section Group PDE survey based on PDE academia and industry expert and practitioner feedback as well as on a literature review. Status and challenges of PDE are discussed and academic and industry perspectives are mapped.