The keys to successful Process Development may be summarized in these actions:
- Define and understand the users and stakeholders of the process being developed. This includes both on the input side (raw materials, sources of energy, the Community where the process will be located, the operators of the process), and the output side (Quality Assurance, customers and consumers of the products produced, Community where the process is located, shareholders, Safety organizations, government agencies, etc.). Know who you are designing for and why. Know the relative rankings of key performance indicators, both financially and technical requirements.
- Understand the key steps to going from raw materials to finished products, including both the steps you want to happen and the ones that might happen inadvertently (failure modes). Study the key steps to a level sufficient to understand how they should work and how they may fail.
- Know the state of the art in the conversion steps you have selected. Be knowledgeable about prior art and current and emerging technology to enable you to use what is available legally and otherwise.
- Learn at increasing scales of risk and invest in a rapid cycle of learning events, both virtual events (modeling/simulation) and physical events (well-designed experiments and production runs).
- Pay attention to feedback from the market (users & stakeholders) as to the performance of your process. Measure what is important and take actions continuously to improve.