Industrial process innovation nowadays is along innovation stages. Major innovation stages used are concept, development, and implementation. This is a relatively new stage in between concept and development, called feasibility stage. The purpose of the feasibility stage is to determine the feasibility of the commercialisation of the innovation project. This feasibility concerns at least: Safety, Health, Environment, Economics, Technical feasibility, and Sustainability (SHEETS) of the process to be implemented at commercial scale. So, the feasibility stage is to evaluate the commercial scale process before the development starts. The reason for having this early assessment is to justify the expensive development stage or abandon the project before large sums of money are spent.
The feasibility stage is three major elements:
- Commercial scale process design
- Development plan
- Value of information study is about the cost involved to generate knowledge to reduce risks
Designing the commercial scale process before the development stage will reveal the unknowns and the resulting risks if the process would be implemented without the development effort.
The development plan is defined to reduce all major risks. It will in general include a pilot plant, down-scaled from the commercial scale with test programme.
The value of information is a systematic study converting risks into potential economic loss and about the development effort and its costs to reduce those losses.
This feasibility stage is part of the advance course: Industrial Process Scale-up, 24-26 of November 2021. It is an online course. You can register via Symmetric.
A detailed description the feasibility stage and all other innovation stages is provided in the book: Jan Harmsen, Industrial Process Scale-up, 2nd revised Edition – A Practical Innovation Guide from Idea to Commercial Implementation, Elsevier, Amsterdam (2019). This book as course book.