Currently laboratory automation is a rapidly growing field of interest in chemical process research and development. The idea of using automated and parallel methods for the optimization of chemical processes was initiated by the extensive implementation of combinatorial techniques in medicinal chemistry. The techniques applied involve all methods and concepts aimed at dramatically increasing the output of research by extensive use of automation, parallelization and miniaturization, fast analysis, advanced data handling and by efficient automated planning, scheduling and tracking. In this paper, the “Combi” or high‐throughput experimentation approach consists of the integration of parallel experimentation with four key modeling and simulation methodologies, modeling, multivariate statistics, statistical design of experimentation and empirical model generation.
