Challenges in the new millennium product discovery and design, enterprise and supply chain.pdf

1 Challenges in the New Millennium: Product Discovery and Design, Enterprise and Supply Chain Optimization, Global Life Cycle Assessment Ignacio E. Grossmann Department of Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, U.S.A. Abstract. This paper first provides an overview of the financial state of the process industry, major issues it currently faces, and job placement of chemical engineers in the U.S. These facts combined with an expanded role of Process Systems Engineering, are used to argue that to support the “value preservation” and “value growth” industry three major future research challenges need to be addressed: Product Discovery and Design, Enterprise and Supply Chain Optimization, and Global Life Cycle Assessment. We provide a brief review of the progress that has been made in these areas, as well as the supporting methods and tools for tackling these problems. Finally, we provide some concluding remarks. Keywords: Process Systems Engineering, Process and Product Design, Supply Chain Optimization, Life Cycle Analysis. 1. INTRODUCTION When Professors Chen and Westerberg invited me to give a keynote lecture on research challenges in the new millennium at the PSE2003 meeting I was rather hesitant to accept their invitation since I was unsure whether I would be in a position to contribute to such an imposing topic. However, after realizing I did not have to provide a research agenda for the entire next millennium, but at best for the next few years, what also made me decide to accept were three major facts. The first is that the future of Process Systems Engineering (PSE) has been very much in my mind through an AIChE perspectives article that I co- authored with Art Westerberg (Grossmann and Westerberg, 2000), and through my involvement in a committee of the National Research Council, which produced the report Beyond the Molecular Frontier: Challenges in Chemistry and Chemical Engineeri