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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]