Maturity of unit operations
Energy efficiency of liquid food heating processes - Heating technologies

The positioning of a unit operation in terms of technological maturity is an important criterion for manufacturers when choosing a future investment. The concept of maturity level often resembles a product life cycle. This concept is very common among marketing professionals. Indeed, each product follows its own life cycle, generally characterized by four phases: launch, growth, maturity and decline.

To position unit operations in relation to each other, the notion of technological maturity is generally defined according to a segmentation made up of four segments:

• non-mature techniques under development ;

• techniques not yet ready for launch ;

• mature techniques in expansion ;

• stagnating mature techniques.

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