A simulated moving bed reactor (SMBR) is a multifunctional reactor wherein the reaction and chromatographic separation take place simultaneously. The positions of the inlet and outlet ports are switched at periodic intervals to simulate a true moving bed system. The design exercise for these units is a challenging task due to the large number of degrees of freedom such as the column volume, SMBR configuration (i.e., number of beds in each section), sectional flow rates, switch time, desorbent concentration and feed concentration. In this work, we propose a simulation based design methodology for the SMBR process that is employed for heterogeneously catalyzed reversible reactions, in which one of the reactants works as a solvent and the catalyst also plays the role of adsorbent. The objectives are productivity (PR) maximization and desorbent consumption (DC) minimization which have a direct impact on the total annualized cost of the process. The performance parameters such as conversion, raffinate purity, ...