Search

High-technology SMEs have shown their capacity for creating and developing innovative services. Reduced size often confines them to vertical applications and limits possibilities for broader development. Network strategies are possible but may need a strong leader to ensure credibility. On the other hand, large operators cannot be proficient in all the necessary domains, particularly when applications move very fast. Therefore they very much need the diversity and the dynamics of SMEs to provide service packages within a global infrastructure. Bringing together different SME actors behind a telecom provider is a challenge displaying good promises if the links between the different services are correctly identified and modelled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with a framework of the product lifecycle costing system, with an emphasis on cost estimating, for supporting decision making, especially the decision making on EOL strategy. In particular, the imprecise EOL data given in forms of interval, due to the lack of knowledge or the ordinary ambiguity of design in the early stage, is taken into consideration. In order to deal with interval data, the robust deviation criterion is applied to obtain a robust product design alternatives with the objective of optimizing the overall product lifecycle costs. It will give a conservative estimation of product lifecycle costs with the corresponding processes through its lifecycle. Consequently, it can be used as a design support tool to help new product development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the legislative pressure and to deal with an economy of raw materials and energy used to transform this matter, designers have to consider more deeply the aspects related to the disassembly of the products for recycling, remanufacturing or reuse. Indeed, these "recoveries" of product/components/materials will modify the production and recycling processes as well as the design choices. In particular, the disassembly operations have to be taken into account in the first stages of the product design, during the conceptual design phase, to obtain a good compromise concerning the final structure of the product. We will present in this article the principles for a future tool using virtual reality. This tool will be used during the conceptual phase of the design to assist the designer to jump from a functional model to the structure of the product by helping the definition of the components, of the connections and thus of the first structure of the product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to identify and bring answers to the problematic of sustainable development posed to the industrials, we develop a methodology aiming at designing sustainable products, which we define as clean and recoverable. In order to help designers to integrate the environmental criteria in the decision making process which will lead to the choice of a design alternative, they need to have access to robust indicators based on environmental assessment of the product and its associated end-of-life scenario. In this article we propose in a first part to model the product as an assembly of components lifecycles in order to build pertinent indicators for designers. Then we develop the concept of "lifecycle bricks" which permits to easily build the products life over many usage cycles, and thus allow on one hand to measure the benefits or loss of one strategy, and on the other hand to gradually focus until the environmental hot spots of the products have been revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering design projects are more and more often developed in network of R&D services of several companies. It is particularly the case of projects developed in the context of European Network of Excellence (NoE). Such a research network is characterized by assignments. One of them is new knowledge creation; it represents the core of the network assignments. In this paper, we aim to characterize the process of new knowledge creation in collaborative and distributed scientific research context. Then we suggest some specifications and a framework for a system to support the creation of new knowledge in a context of distributed collaborative project of engineering design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since a couple of years, services are taking more and more importance beside the physical products. The market is shifting from selling product to providing utility. The Product-Service System(PSS) is an emergent concept that promotes the embedding of services with product. But the inclusion of services within the product will add some modifications to the design process of the product. Consequently, to encourage enterprises to create PSS, it is important to have during the design process of these sets a common representation of product and services. In this article, the PSS principle will be explained. Then, a PSS case study will be represented with two different representations. One is Agent-Based Model which has been developed in Service/Product Engineering and Functional Analysis. It will be discussed which one could be the more adapted for PSS in order to help and guide designers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of the product lifecycle processes is one of the crucial industrial concerns. It highlights the role of knowledge capitalization and valorization. In this work, a generic model is proposed: the FBS-PPRE model (Function, Behavior, Structure - Process, Product, Resource, external Effect). The main scientific contribution consists in a conceptual unification making it possible to increase the homogeneity of the represented objects as well as the completeness of the modeling, when addressing all the life-cycle situations of the product, the technologies and the enterprise. In order to allow a description of the various objects handled by the company according to the same formalism, the approach highlights the distinction between the concepts of nature (material, temporal, software, organizational or energy) and of role. Four different roles are distinguished: the role of product (object resulting from the process), of resource (means used in a process), of process (temporal, spatial and hierarchical organization of activities) and of external effect (constraints influencing the course of a process). The same object can play successively various roles during its lifecycle. In addition, an effective management of behaviors is proposed: a behavior of an object is always combined with a process element, which makes it possible to define the context. It then becomes easier to manage the evolution of the object and of its representations, namely their transformational dynamic. This approach was implemented within the framework of a demonstrator of information system of a company designing and producing vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a framework for controlling the life cycle of so called "integrated manufacturing systems". In the process, the economic efficiency of continuous improvement measures taken during its further life are evaluated in a simulation and monitored using real production data. To do so the paper identifies relevant data sources and describes the integration into a simulation model. To improve the performance of the manufacturing system the model describes general starting points. Before implementation the changes will be simulated and evaluated. After implementation the data from reality will be compared with the forecast to improve the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the interest of an integrative Product-Process-Organisation model. This model creates connections between a representation of product, a representation of design process and a representation of company capabilities. It also links various representations of a same product due to every life cycle step to various activities that are involved during design. This model is to be shared on a collaborative fashion by various design contributors who have very different knowledge, know-how and goals. This technology provides a virtual space where experts from various skills negotiate decisions about product design and manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a discussion of some problems related to knowledge management in product lifecycle thought treating some applications developed in different aspects of lifecycle: conceptual design, detailed design, production, selling, maintenance, diagnostic and dismissing. In these applications, we show how Knowledge management is involved in all these phases: IT proposes several methodologies and tools to represent and manage knowledge to aid expert who operates in the domains related to product lifecycle. Methodologies such as Triz can be used to assist conceptual design, while KBE systems permit to automate design procedure of numerous products. Neural networks and fuzzy logic help to select right approaches to production. The paper ends presenting some applications performed by the authors, focusing aspects related to design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The approach described in this paper comprises a set of methods that helps enterprises to decide whether a product data management system (PDMS) should be applied and how this could be done. On the one hand a precise and applicable procedure to implement the system is provided. On the other hand information whether an enterprise is prepared to the introduction of such a system is given already in preliminary stages. For both cases methods for planning and application will be presented to support a company's Product-Lifecycle-Management (PLM)-strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart Machining Systems (SMS) are an important part of Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) since its capabilities include: producing the first and every product correct; improving the response of the production system to changes in demand (just in time); realizing rapid manufacturing; and, providing data on an as needed basis. Thereby, SMS improve the performance of production systems and reduce production costs. In addition, an SMS not only has to improve a particular machining process, but it also has to determine the best optimized solution to produce the part faster, better, at lower cost, and with a minimum impact on the environment. In addition, new software tools are required to facilitate the improvement of a machining system, characterized by a high level of expertise or heuristic methods. A global approach requires integrating knowledge/ information about the product design, production equipment, and machining process. This paper first discusses the main characteristics and components that are envisioned to be part of SMS. Then, uncertainties associated with models and data and the optimization tasks in SMS are discussed. Robust Optimization is an approach for coping with such uncertainties in SMS. Current use of machining models by production engineers and associated problems are discussed. Finally, the paper discusses interoperability needs for integrating SMS into the product life cycle, as well as the need for knowledge-based systems. The paper ends with a description of future research trends and work plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A complete plant design is described through an huge amount of data organized in a big number of documents of different types logically linked each other by complex relationships; managing information about plants is a complex and expensive task. The techniques commonly adopted for hazard identification require high costs and time for their development; many specialists in different disciplines need to be involved for all the time necessary to complete the plant documentation analysis. The research project here presented is based on the idea of taking advantage of the organization of the information typically offered by Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems in order to allow designers to evaluate specific plant aspects, in particular those concerning possible hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many methodologies and tools have been developed to design environmentally friendly products, life cycle cost aspects have barely been included and likewise there has been no significant discussion on how to effectively combine different tools. There are specific tools supporting environmentally friendly design such as LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), and tools supporting cost optimisation such as Target Costing and Life Cycle Costing. A combination of these tools is necessary to minimise costs along the whole product life cycle while simultaneously fulfilling environmental requirements. The Target Life Cycle Costing (TLCC) method was developed by the Fraunhofer IPA, concentrating on Design for Environment and on optimising product functionalities by decreasing environmental costs. This paper analyses how designers can optimise costs and conduct product redesign by Target Life Cycle Costing, providing case studies on two products: a medical appliance and a washing machine. The analysis shows that implementing TLCC facilitates cost reduction by product redesign considering functional roles of product components from both an environmental and an economic point of view. This type of combination supports designers effectively, whereas a single tool could not achieve the same results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Eco-PaS methodology supports anticipative weak point analysis of a product's life cycle environmental impact. Using quantitative information on functional parameters available in early design stages, the order of magnitude of an environmental indicator is estimated. This result is obviously influenced by a number of uncertain factors. However, a critical analysis of these factors allows to point the designer at promising design directions at a time of the design process when many degrees of freedom remain available. This paper recapitulates the principles of the Eco-PaS methodology, and applies the method to a design concept of an electric fruit juicer. The validity of the Eco-PaS approach is assessed by comparing the results with a streamlined Life Cycle Assessment study performed on a detailed product design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technical services (maintenance, upgrading, user training etc.) aim at enhancing the performance of investment goods. To systematically exploit their potentials the scope of traditional product engineering methodologies needs to be enlarged. A two step method will be introduced for this reason. It systematically builds up on the principle of modularization for realizing technical Product-Service Systems, i.e. customer solutions comprising both physical (product) and non physical (technical service) constituents. The method covers a process library for designing and manufacturing technical Product-Service Systems as well as a procedure for selecting, combining and adapting appropriate process modules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, growing consumer awareness of the environment, and the stringent government regulations have forced manufacturers to consider Design for Environment (DFE) during product development. DFE is a systematic approach of incorporating environmental attributes into the design of a product by considering the potential environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle. Although DFE assessment is generally carried out during the early design phase, it is also a useful exercise to assess the environmental impact of an existing product, and to provide the design suggestions. In this paper, a DFE assessment of a household appliance is presented with the aim to assess the environmental and economical impact of an existing design. Later, the result of the initial assessment is used to provide design suggestions for improving the existing design. The outcome of the study suggests that DFE assessment allows manufacturers to compare different design configurations in order to reduce the environmental and economical impact of a product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research work concerned the study of eco design methodologies able to lead designers in planning the entire life cycle of products in the early stages of design and development activities, also including marketing and management aspects. In order to make the use of traditional eco-tools more efficient we tried to develop a streamlined life cycle approach, based on the Life Cycle Assessment criteria, aimed at investigating the end of life of products, throughout the development of several different scenarios which take into account the main phases of the product life cycle. With this aim in mind, an attempt was made to integrate the Life Cycle Modelling approach in the first phases of the Methodical Design process by means of the development of a design technique, called "Screening Life Cycle Modelling" (SLCM). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial products, green or not, are all compromises between many demands and constraints. Functionality and business performance are of course the dominants. Some products can easily be transformed in a green direction by changing a toxic substance over to something harmless others face a much more complicated situation. In order to face new challenges in product development it is essential to have a strategy for the integration of EcoDesign into "normal/classical" product development. Depending on the type of product and its impact on environmental performance, different strategies are possible.Very important is materials flow and information but also to have a procedure for getting different stakeholders inside the company together in forming requirements for new product with EcoDesign criteria integrated. Eco cycling of materials is a well known metaphor for the sustainable technical development ahead. With new concepts as Product-Service Systems and Producers responsibility a linear model can be useful. In this case the material can be looked upon as a working capital along a time axis where functionality of products and benefits to the customer is a profit and the recycling loss of materials can be seen as a cost. This paper will discuss this situation and put light on a possible new way of looking on EcoDesign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Step by step, this paper presents a streamlined product structuring method which includes environmental structuring criteria. The so-called EcoDesign Structure Matrix (EcoDSM) is based on the conventional Design Structure Matrix approach which allows highlighting interdependencies between elements of the product structure. A particular concern has been put on streamlining the method, since the additional effort for the product developer analysing environmental effects of the product structure should be restricted to a minimum. Thus, this study aims at formulating (obvious) interdependencies by algebraic expressions instead of taking record of them manually. The article is completed by a case study of a household product which should rather illustrate the procedure of structuring products with the EcoDSM than proving its power to cope with complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designers have a key role in adapting products to the environment and a sustainable society and many attempts have been made to establish universal DfE guidelines that can be used for these design situations. However, most attempts have failed due to the level of information; too generic makes no sense for the user, and too specific means that the guidelines are too private to be useful for everyone. Furthermore, designers and the acquisition department as well as marketing and production have different background knowledge and different primary tasks. Depending on the complexity and type of product as well as on the cultural background in different companies and countries, the product development process looks different. It is therefore impossible to establish generic DfE guidelines that are valid for any product in any company. The 10 Golden Rules are a set of generic Design for Environment aspects (first presented by Luttropp (2000)). The "10 Golden Rules" are broad principles, which establish a common basis for a product development team, giving the team members a mutual perspective on the sustainability issue. The 10 Golden Rules are preferably individually customized to be of most use in direct design and product development process. This paper presents the customisation of the 10 Golden Rules at Bombardier Transportation, which is one of the worlds leading companies manufacturing rail vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With new environmental directives, manufacturers become responsible for the disposal of their products at the end of their life. These new constraints imply new costs to take into account in the product definition. So, for manufacturers, designing products, which are never discarded, is not a utopia, but one more objective to reach during the design process of the products. In fact, to control end of life costs, manufacturers have to develop new end of life strategies to increase the economic interest. But, end of life considerations are not sufficient, environmental aspects have also to be respected during the product life cycle. These new objectives imply major changes during the design of the products: A real use of the concept of product life cycle, in order to build product life cycle scenarios that correspond to economic, environmental and society needs, this in a sustainable logic of development. The construction of expertise specific to the various scenarios which can appear, in order to help products designers to integrate the new life cycle constraints related to the new types of consumption, to new supply chains, to new technologies… In this article, we will present researches that we currently carry out in order to help this concept of "products, which are never discarded" to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assuring constantly high machine availability is a central challenge for production. Increasingly, manufacturers get involved in respective tasks by taking over warranties on specified availability targets. The compliance with a specified availability target can be accomplished by a suitable configuration of additional equipment elements in line with product-accompanying services. However, varying boundary conditions across the machine life require an adaptation of these additional measures, especially of the services. The article presents a method for planning a lifecycle-adapted service configuration in order to achieve availability targets at lowest cost. It focuses on the measurement of availability contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decade product design were enlarged to cope with environmental requirements from materials selection to final assembly and disassembly for recycling. DFE, DFR, DFD (Design for Environment, Design for recycling and Design for Disassembly) are new designing approaches that incorporate the environment issues from the beginning of a product development. But recycling does not intrinsically prevent environmental impacts. For instance, regarding toxic materials such as heavy metals, lead, mercury, chrome and cadmium, new and clean technologies and sound recycling processes management are required avoiding extra environmental impacts. This is exactly the case or lead car batteries that claims for cleaner recycling processes and for technological innovation. In this way new technological trails leading to more efficient batteries, are suppose to have a great impact on recycling process in mediumterm and even short-term. Car batteries are recycled all over the world at different rates such at 90 % in European Union and at 50 % in less developed countries. In Brazil we do not have official data on batteries recycling but a case study made at CETEM by V. Trouche(1) under my supervision got to an estimated rate on an interval from 65 to 80 %. The main propose of this article is to present some results of this case study, highlighting the best environmental practices and giving additionally some insights on environmental and economical aspects of car batteries recycling in Brazil. This case study was conducted not only for its importance for the Brazilian market, but also for clean technologies and sound recycling process management required in order to avoid extra environmental impacts from lead car batteries discharge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive and the End of Life Vehicle (ELV) directive will result in an increasing demand for cost efficient disassembly systems at a high capacity. But major differences between the disassembly plan from the planning system and real disassembly situations cause difficulties for execution in the workshop in line with what was planned originally. The objective of this work is to reflect availabilities of disassembly tools in the real disassembly cell as well as to provide a new concept for generating a set of operation sequences by using disassembly process planning. Algorithms developed for dynamic process and operation planning takes into account the disassembly system conditions and the actual disassembly steps for the specific product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains and illustrates the process Xerox uses at its UK factory to return old photocopiers to an "as new" product. Through a series of industrial processes in a factory environment, a discarded product is completely disassembled. Usable parts are cleaned, refurbished, and put into inventory. Then the product is reassembled from old parts to produce a unit fully equivalent to the original new product. Although Xerox has made a profitable business from remanufacturing, there are many barriers to its wider development. This paper outlines some of these barriers to remanufacturing and suggests some ways in which they might be removed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of networked RFID-based automated identification approaches has resulted in the ability to enhance the quality of product information that is available to make decisions along the product lifecycle. One of the major impact areas of such a capability is in improving the effectiveness of decisions made during end-of-life product recovery. This paper investigates the link between product recovery decisions and information quality through observations made from a number of case studies. A Bayesian approach for quantitative evaluation of the impact of enhanced product information on product recovery option decisions is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The remarketing of used flat screen desktop monitors is evolving into a profitable market segment. Demand for used or non-functional monitors is growing especially in Eastern European nations and cannot be covered by End-of-Life (EoL) products, yet. Non-functional phase-out models are often sold to repair shops in Eastern European countries, which is often associated with improper EoL treatment of non-reusable components. To avoid negative environmental impacts caused by today's practice in demand markets with slack environmental regulations, remanufacturing must start at the returned product's origin. This paper discusses economical, technological and environmental aspects in remanufacturing of flat screen monitors. Legal recycling requirements for the monitor's components are described. Applying Method Time Measurement, a disassembly study is conducted for selected monitor models. Based on the results quality classes are defined for reusable components. Remanufacturing challenges in collection, testing, disassembly, and program planning are identified, and a prototypical hybrid disassembly system is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and clarifies the academic and industrial terminology used in the area of product recovery. It is concluded that there exist many different concepts and definitions in academia and industry, several of which are unclearly defined. Given this, a new way to define product recovery is presented through the use of a model. This model is based on actual industrial product recovery cases, existing academic product recovery concepts and definitions and product design theory. The presentation contains a holistic model that can be used for describing and analyzing different product recovery scenarios. In addition, several industry cases are presented as a verification of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the industries have mechanisms to measure their economical efficiency through economical and financial indexes, consolidated globally. The same does not happen with the measure of their efficiency in relation to sustainable development. The sustainability indicators foreseen in the ISO series, are difficulty to measure, have high cost for determination of some indicators, they turn impracticable to use for a great part of the world companies and without conditions of being applied by the small industries and services companies. In this work it is proposed 25 indexes, easily measurable, as electric power consumption, water, material balance, mass of liquid, solids and gaseous effluents generated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From an economic point of view the productivity associated with commonly available disassembly methods today seldom makes disassembly the preferred end-of-life solution for massive take back product streams. In consequence systematic reuse of parts or components, or recycling of pure material fractions are normally not achievable. Economic models demonstrate that the efficiency of disassembly operations should be increased an order of magnitude to assure the competitiveness of ecologically preferred, disassembly oriented end-of-life scenarios. Using fully automated disassembly techniques does not allow to overcome this efficiency gap if not combined with innovative reversible joints. Enhanced disassembly principles, in which external trigger signals allow to simultaneously reverse the action of multiple fasteners, forms a promising approach to low cost mass disassembly. In this paper a state-of-the-art of these emerging techniques is sketched, categorising the fasteners according to their generic applicability and the degree of imbedded automation of the triggerable disassembly activity. A number of perspectives for innovative reversible fasteners are sketched as a contribution to this promising paradigm of selfdisassembling products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Servicification of economic activities could lead to dematerialization. The authors have been carrying out fundamental researches on a novel engineering paradigm to deal with services, service engineering. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of service engineering methods and tool to support service design processes through applications to two service examples in industries' real operation. In an application to a hotel service, redesign options were obtained including an introduction of a sun-lighting facility and a cash-back system for not used towels. Thus, the methods and tool were proved to be effective to support designers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is becoming increasingly clear that in order to reduce lifecycle impacts, manufacturers need to go beyond product design considerations alone. Important factors to be considered also include nontechnical factors such as business models, market attributes and consumer behaviour. This paper provides a comparative case study of five categories of products in the Japanese market—photocopiers, household appliances, disposable cameras, personal computers and automobiles —and shows how these factors affect lifecycle outcomes. Based on the case studies, we draw general conclusions about the design of appropriate lifecycle strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at giving quantitative figures on the climate and energy challenge that may change the conditions in which business industry is operating. The material efficiency approach along the whole life cycle of products and services enables to show how to shift away from the unsustainable "business as usual scenario". Indeed, climate policy often focuses on energy systems and price of carbon and technological options and may fail to foster sufficiency solutions compatible with business objectives and a more functional society. A focus on R&D needs and appropriate technological, economical and social framework to enhance the shift to sustainable "product service systems" is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural and public attitudes as well as new business approaches and life cycle concepts have impacted and will continue to impact not only matters of consumption and use but indeed almost every aspect of the product life cycle. Ecological awareness, globalization and excess manufacturing capacity along with intensive competition are the main factors that have led to what is no less than a revolution in design and manufacturing. This revolution is enabled by improved information technology. This paper explores and briefly analyzes the forces driving the significant changes in the market that have affected not only design and manufacturing but rather the entire product life cycle. Moreover, it identifies the expected changes and business opportunities in manufacturing due to new legislation requiring manufacturer accountability during the entire life cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International policy documents call for the application of life-cycle assessment (LCA) in the development of sustainable patterns of consumption and production. We describe how LCA, in combination with input-output analysis and household consumption data can be used to determine the environmental impact of consumption patterns. We shortly review results from studies focussing on CO2 emissions as environmental indicator. This household environmental impact (HEI) assessment can be used to analyse differences among households according to socioeconomic variables, age, settlement characteristics, and lifestyles. The change of the total environmental impact over time can be attributed to underlying variables such as efficiency gains, changes in consumption levels, structural changes, and changes in the population. This provides an understanding of causal factors influencing the development of HEIs, which can be used in scenario modelling. In addition, we describe how HEI assessment can be used to inform policy implementation, both through ex-ante analysis of the possible effect of an intended measure and through the ex-post evaluation of implemented policy measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]