The use of layered silicates is steadily growing in polymer processing due to their great potential of enhancing material properties. Depending on the particle structure (agglomerated, intercalated, or exfoliated), a significantly higher level of improvement of the material properties can be achieved. The degree of exfoliation is exceedingly linked with the residence time and shear energy induced during processing. These processing parameters themselves are depending on the type of processing technique and conditions. The influence on exfoliation rate and the needed values for processing nanocomposites are not known precisely, but would be of major interest according to an optimization of mechanical and physical properties. In this work, the effect of different processing techniques (compounding, extrusion, and injection molding) on the dispersion of the nanofiller is investigated. A specific shear energy is calculated by the induced shear energy and the residence time regarding the mass throughput for better comparison. The differences in the degree of exfoliation according to dissimilarity of the chosen processing techniques are compared via various methods such as internal pressure creep rupture test, longitudinal shrinkage, and tensile test. It is shown that the calculated values are correlating with good precision, especially for the extrusion process. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 2012. (C) 2012 Society of Plastics Engineers