Careers in Product Development for Chemical Engineers

By: Teresa Jurgens-Kowal, 12/13/22

What do you think of when you consider a new product? Maybe it’s a new smartphone or video game. Maybe you think of a new hybrid car or a meatless “hamburger.” All these new products we hear about every day, and they make a big splash on television news and social media.

However, we encounter new products – and services – with both hardware and software improvements in all aspects of our lives. As chemical engineers, we also influence the design, development, and manufacture of new products. In fact, new product development (NPD) is an attractive career path for chemical engineers. NPD blends our scientific and technical knowledge with business and market expertise. (More on marketing and sales careers in the next post in this series).

What is product development?

Product development is the transformation of an idea into a commercially salable product (or service). Products might be tangible goods – things that we can touch and feel. Or products may be intangible – like software, e-commerce, or services. In all cases, products involve a producer and a consume. If you conceive a great idea but never sell it for a profit, it is simply an invention (and not a product).

Note that we include services within the definition of a product. Services include things like insurance, monitoring, and consulting. Also starting with an idea, services provide something of value to a customer for which the producer (service provider) makes a profit. As in all product development, both the consumer and producer gain value through the transaction.

Other new products include improvements and next generation offerings. In earlier posts, we discussed traditional roles of chemical engineers in plants and R&D as well as working in quality management. Understanding these skills can improve existing products to enhance how customers use their products, save money in manufacture, and reduce failures in usage. Chemical engineers are particularly well-suited to careers in product development because of our educational training and analytical thought, systems approaches, and problem-solving ability.

Check out more from the article here.