Nick Hallale (2001) explains that with process integration, industries are making more money from their raw materials and capital assets while becoming cleaner and more sustainable.
In contrast, an analytical approach would attempt to improve or optimize process units separately without necessarily taking advantage of potential interactions among them.
Such an opportunity would be missed with an analytical approach, as it would seek to optimize each unit, and thereafter it wouldn’t be possible to re-use the heat internally.
Also it is often employed, in conjunction with simulation and mathematical optimization tools to identify opportunities in order to better integrate a system (new or existing) and reduce capital and/or operating costs.
In the future, it seems probable that the boundary between targets and design will be blurred and that these will be based on more structural information regarding the process network.