Successfully producing a product that meets the goals of the process is critical. If the process scale-up process fails to produce the required productivity, quality and performance, then the cost of production will increase significantly and, more importantly, the market may shrink while money and time are invested in improving mixing and blending.

Far more money may be spent on solving mixing problems during production than would have been spent on fully evaluating and solving mixing problems during process development. The cost of improving mixing is so great that, in the United States, for example, the chemical industry loses about 5% of its production due to poor mixing and blending; in 1989, the chemical industry alone lost billions of dollars; and in 1993, a multinational chemical company lost more than a hundred million dollars due to poor mixing.