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The Whole Life Cycle Engineering Costing Management is an effective method to minimize the cost of an engineering project for the whole life, including the construction period, the operation period and the removal period. In this paper, we divided the Engineering Cost into three parts of labor costs, material costs and machinery costs. We have built a River-influx Model to calculate the social discount rate for the future, based on historical data and using MATLAB software to fit curves. We can then calculate the whole Life Cycle Engineering Cost for the future.

Existing engineering strategies have been developed for how to support lean production by considering product quality and safety protection design. Consequently, plant operations become sophisticated. In addition, social requirements such as safety regulations as well as new market demands force planets and/or their operations to be revamped so as to satisfy demands. There are few methodologies to support life-uycle engineering (LCE) as a whole. Therefore, we have proposed a concept to support LCE and relevant engineering environments at PSE-ESCAPE, Trondheim, in 1997 (Lu et al., 1997). This paper describes our engineering scope for supporting Plant Life-Cycle Engineering with safety-conscious production based on relationships of methodology development and the Engineering Activity Model (EAM) and reports some of our results.

Life cycle engineering of injection moulded components is often aimed at minimizing the material intensity mainly by decreasing the part volume and increasing the use of recycled materials, while fulfilling structural and manufacturability requirements. However both these solutions produce an additional environmental impact, due to the higher energy consumption in manufacturing, that is often overlooked. The paper addresses the multi-objective problem of minimizing the overall environmental impact by incorporating the numerical simulation of the process and the structural analysis of the part in a CAD-based shape optimization environment. The proposed approach has been demonstrated through an industrial case study.

Problem statement: Environment issue on the dumping of used household product is a big challenge nowadays. Towards green design, life cycle of a product is very crucial. This study discussed on recycling strategies which include reuse, service, remanufacture and recycle with or without disassembly by using Support Vector Machine Method (SVM). Approach: In early stage of prediction, the input parameters of wear-out life; technology cycle, level of integration, number of parts, reason for redesign and design cycle were incorporated. Six household equipments were studied includes vacuum cleaner, washing machine, television, portable radio and hand held vacuum. Results: The end life predicted results were compared with the previous literature study. Conclusion: The developed End Of Life (EOL) strategies model is good in agreement with existing industry practice.

Taking the restrictions imposed by the EU ELV directive into account, the use of non-recyclable composite components in car manufacturing is not obvious. However, from a life cycle engineering perspective the introduction of composites in car design is not necessarily negative in terms of additional environmental impact. An extensive life cycle analysis for a reference car design was conducted to study the effects of replacement of conventional steel structures by lightweight composite alternatives. The obtained results reveal the need for a nuanced attitude towards more intensive use of composites in car design. The sensitivity of the analysis results for the used carbon fibre production method is documented, indicating significant improvement potential based on emerging, less energy consuming production methods.

Although the life cycle engineering aims at ‘sustainability’, its image is still unclear. While various scenarios have been proposed for this purpose, their rationality and assumptions are not clearly described because they are just documents referring some simulation results. For analyzing and composing the scenarios, this paper proposes the framework of ‘Sustainable Society Scenario (3S) Simulator’ and a methodology for structural representation of scenarios. This paper also demonstrates a prototype system and its structural representation of the IPCC scenario. The representation clarified the basic structure of this scenario and highlighted a set of assumptions as the base of this scenario.

The severe competition in the market has driven enterprises to produce a wider variety of products to meet consumers' needs. However, frequent variation of product specifications causes the assembly and disassembly of components and modules to become more and more complicated. As a result, the issue of product modular design is a problem worthy of concern. In this study, engineering attributes were added to the liaison graph model for the evaluation of part connections. The engineering attributes added, including contact type, combination type, tool type, and accessed direction, serve to offer designers criteria for evaluating the component liaison intensity during the design stage. A grouping genetic algorithm (GGA) is then employed for clustering the components and crossover mechanisms are modified according to the need of modular design. Furthermore, a reasonable green modular design evaluation is conducted using the green material cost analysis. According to the results, adjusted design proposals are suggested and materials that cause less pollution are recommended to replace the components with pollution values higher than those in the module. Finally, the authors use Borland C++ 6.0 to evaluate the system and clustering method. To illustrate the methodology proposed in this study, a table lamp is offered as an example.

To meet the dynamically changing market requirements, production enterprises are collaborating in the form of production chains to share life cycle engineering data/knowledge as well as to improve production efficiency and product quality. This paper proposes a model-based control mechanism and intelligent control layer, which is used to control the operation of chained production enterprises. The control mechanism is achieved by defining control levels as mapped to production chain topology using the concept of operation isolation area. Production constraints and control rules are defined as attached to structure elements. The proposed control layer is used to decide the suitable operation of the selected production chain, in view of process constraints and operating conditions. A case study of a generic production chain with recycling is used to show the proposed control mechanism.

This paper talks about on aging systems, electronics obsolescence and life cycle engineering.

Identifying the impact of a design decision on a product's life cycle characteristics is important, but often difficult. Constructing links between these aspects is even more challenging in the early phases of design, since the consequences of the decisions are far away and little is yet known about the product's life cycle. Nevertheless, early design decisions have a high influence on the life cycle characteristics of a product. One early design decision is the selection of product architecture, that is, the fundamental structure and layout of a product. In this paper, we present a method to determine a relative comparison of product architectures based on a model of life cycle costs that can be assessed very early in the design process. The method utilises reliability distributions, relative cost estimates and cost incurrence distributions. We demonstrate our method on a real industrial case study of an energy-producing device. The alternative product architectures of the product are identified to possess very different life cycle characteristics. The relative comparison considers these characteristics and provides valuable information to support the design decision.

An overview is given in this article of the most widely used matrix materials for fiber-reinforced plastics and their relative merits. The processing routes commonly used to produce composite parts are then discussed, with reference to cost forecasting, life cycle engineering, and developing technologies. Finally, the important question of process–structure–property relationships in thermoset- and thermoplastic-based fiber-reinforced plastics is addressed.

Current changes in European Union legislation forces design engineers to incorporate sustainable thinking, environmental protection and eco-design into their design considerations. Many companies are concerned that integrating the eco-design principle into their product design process could result in increasing product cost and a loss of their competitive edge. Within this paper recent and possible future developments of the ‘eco-design of energy using products’ (EuP) Directive are discussed as well as the effects this has on companies. The main outcome of this research is the development of a design decision methodology that helps the design engineer of complex products to apply the eco-design principles without a trade-off on economic issues. The paper explains how the framework takes into account the product hierarchy and supports changes to the product design. Furthermore the paper presents an example of how the basics of the methodology are applied to a small household item.

In a perspective of improving the behavior of a product in its whole life cycle, the efficient planning of the disassembly processes acquires strategic importance, as it can improve both the product’s use phase, by facilitating service operations (maintenance and repairs), and the end-oflife phase, by favoring the recycling ofmaterials and the reuse of components. The present paper proposes an approach to disassembly process planning that supports the search for the disassembly sequence best suited for both aspects, service of the product and recovery at the end of its useful life, developing two different algorithms. Notwithstanding their different purposes, the two algorithms share the typology of modeling on which they operate, and the logical structure according to which the genetic search procedure is developed. The choice of implementing genetic algorithms was prompted by the intrinsic complexity of the complete mathematical solution to the problem of generating the disassembly sequences, which suggests the use of a non-exhaustive approach. As is shown in the results of a set of simulations, both algorithms may be used not only for the purposes related to disassembly process planning but also as supporting tools during the product design phases. This is especially so for the second algorithm, that deals with the problem of a recovery-oriented disassembly through an all-encompassing approach, combining economical and environmental considerations, and extending the evaluations to the whole life cycle of the product. This formulation gives this algorithm and autonomous decisional capacity on both the disassembly level to be reached, and the definition of the optimum recovery plan (i.e., the best destination for the disassembled components, based on some significant properties of them).

Life cycle engineering design (LCED) is the key and comprehensive technology to realize manufacturing industries’ sustainable development. Its main objective is to support design teams to create products considering the entire product life-cycle from conception through manufacturing and assembly to disassembly, recycling, disposal, and lifecycle assessment. So LCED should be collaboratively implemented among the different departments. This paper puts forward knowledge management architecture of LCED based ontologies and multi-agent system. The definition of the domain-specific ontology, the multi-agent architecture are described. Based on the two concepts, this paper discusses the detailed construction of CAD agents, LCED evaluation agents and knowledge maintenance agents and the system implementation. It can fulfill the concurrent collaborative developing of a product under distributed environments and also meet the requirement of knowledge sharing, interoperability, reusing among the whole lifecycle of product.

Thales Group designs, develops, produces, supports, operates innovative solutions in large and various domains (Aerospace, Space, Defence, Aerospace, Ground Transportation, Security, etc.) where the operational performances are more and more critical. In this context, to ensure competitiveness and remain leader on the market, Thales has investigated in an extension of the recommended Integrated Product and Process Development approach (see [DoD IPPD], [INCOSE SE HB], [CMMI]), applied for Co-Development towards a “Co-Engineering approach” addressing all stages and concerns of the operational system as a key lever of efficiency and SE benefits achievement. This paper presents the implementation in Thales of this Co-Engineering approach identifying major principles to be mutually agreed and applied (on Technical and Organisational aspects) per System Life Cycle stage, necessary changes to be led, and finally, an illustration by typical scenarios as Returns of Experience.

Lithium-ion battery remaining useful life (RUL) estimation has become a critical issue of intelligent battery management system (BMS). Various models and algorithms have been developed to achieve the RUL prognostics for lithium-ion batteries, to obtain high estimation performance. Generally, a single model usually requires long train time and complex train progress to reach satisfactory precision, while complex data-driven approaches sometimes result in overfitting results. Therefore, many fused and integrated methods have been proposed to overcome the disadvantages of the single method. However, few fusion approaches deal with the uncertainty management or uncertainty integration at present. In order to solve the lack of uncertainty management of existing fusion RUL estimation methods, a fusion model based on Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) of uncertainty integration for lithium-ion battery RUL estimation is presented in this paper. Firstly, sub-models applying Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) are created. Then, the posterior probability of these sub-models are calculated and integrated to implement the probability fusion of BMA process for RUL prediction. Experimental results with the battery data sets from Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) show that compared with a single model, the BMA fusion model achieves higher accuracy and stability. In addition, uncertainty management is taken into consideration, which can be referred as a new research direction for lithium-ion battery RUL estimation.

The most costly and not yet solved problem is to avoid the downtime of machines and equipment and thereby enhancing the overall performance of a production system. To minimize disturbances and breakdowns, e-maintenance and process supervisory control systems are being developed and introduced. The implementation of advanced e-maintenance technologies considers Cost, Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Productivity, i.e. the performance, for any equipment and associated applications. It necessitates a holistic approach for integrating views and evaluations, not only of the systems themselves, but also for their mutual interactions and their interactions with the environment. Infotronics technologies integrate information processing and the processing of physical objects. Intelligent maintenance systems are means for next – generation maintenance strategies.

After a focus on eco(re-)design methodology the Design for Sustainability (DfS-) program of the Delft University of Technology today aims at renewable energy and entrepreneurship for sustainable product innovation. Emerging technologies in the field of renewable energy, such as flexible photo-voltaic solar cells and human power techniques are promising solutions for application in portable electronic products and new mobility means. For the longer term fuel cell technology is being considered as the potential main contributor to the decarbonization and detoxification of product-systems. The industrial design engineer plays a crucial role in combining the potentialities of the new technologies and the required functionalities of the sustainable- products and services of the future. The full integration of these new technologies into products and the development of a related appropriate methodology is the challenge for Delft s life cycle engineering and design program, including the formulation of design rules, assessment metrics and benchmarking approaches. Another challenge is to find appropriate niche product/service/market combinations where sustainable innovations can create an added value for the users, other actors in the life cycle, and society as a whole. Here, the new drivers such as legislation based upon producers responsibility for products play a crucial role. Within UNEP s D4S program, TUDelft, the IIIEE Institute of Lund and others work together in diffusing new insights in this.

This paper presents a method to calculate economic and ecological indicators to evaluate waste regarding material recycling. As material recycling is still a preferred option for closing the loop of electric and electronic equipment (EEE), it is important to have an indicator that offers the feasibility to evaluate the benefits and burdens of different recycling routes according to the contained materials and elements. Depending on the description of the economic and ecological potential of waste, the requirements and calculation method will be discussed.

A comprehensive methodology to enhance disassemblability of products has been presented in this paper. Disassemblability of a product is a function of several parameters such as exertion of manual force for disassembly, degree of precision required for effective tool placement, weight, size, material and shape of components being disassembled, use of hand tools, etc. The study of relevant literature indicates the presence of disassembly evaluation criteria and methodologies that address the problem partially such as disassembly sequence planning or economic analysis. As far as design for disassembly is concerned, there is a plethora of literature on rules to improve recycling end-of-life components. A systematic methodology to incorporate disassembly considerations in product design and enable quantitative evaluation of the design is absent. The current methodology assigns time-based numeric indices to each design factor, which make for easy and quick determination of disassembly time. A higher score indicates anomalies in product design from the disassembly perspective. Addressing these anomalies can result in significant design modifications rendering an overall increase in disassemblability of the product. Decisions regarding design modifications are based on weighing several factors such as technical and economic feasibility, overall functionality and structural rigidity of the product as a whole. Relevance to industry A comprehensive Design for Disassembly methodology is developed which is intended to act as a tool in life cycle engineering.

Life cycle engineering, or integrated product and process development (IPPD), has gained much attention recently due to its significant applications to various products and systems in industry. The authors' previous work introduced an IPPD methodology as a systems approach to competitive and environmentally conscious product and process development. Different product development issues are formally described as constrained optimization problems and solved using a life locus tree. The paper extends the methodology to the development of manufacturing systems. In order to increase its modeling capability and decision accuracy, a time variable is introduced into the methodology. The execution duration of processes and their time-varying characteristics are considered. The methodology is then applied to the life cycle development of a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). FMS machine selection and decisions along its life are optimally made. The latter includes how many times each FMS component should be upgraded and which end-of-life option it should take. Life cycle decision making is based on cost, benefit, and environmental impact of an FMS. The proposed approach provides a new way to develop cost-effective, high-quality, and environmentally conscious FMS.

This work shows the relationship between product life-cycle modularity and product life-cycle costs. Previous statements tying increased modularity to improved costs, specifically product retirement costs, motivated this work. The benefits of modularity with respect to product functionality, product development, production, the supply chain, and other life-cycle elements have been expounded by many works in several fields. Increased modularity has been widely considered to lead to decreased costs. Many have stated that, including modular design tradeoffs early in the design process will decrease life-cycle costs. Some even propose the hypothesis that modular architecture will lead to decreased life-cycle costs even if the modules are not made with other life-cycle characteristics specifically in mind. However, this desirable relationship - decreased costs driven by the increased modularity - has never been shown. No research has been done to prove if there exists a relationship between modularity and cost. Many products and research projects have been based on this unproven assumption. This work begins the exploration into whether a relationship exists between life-cycle product modularity and life-cycle cost for a wide range of consumer products and a wide range of life-cycle issues. The purpose of this paper is to expand initial results in this vain to the whole life-cycle for a more comprehensive look. The results of our work differ significantly from conventional thought and are therefore interesting to both the research and application communities. It is our hope that this paper will motivate others to take a second look at the science behind product modularity and its application.

A comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment was conducted on bio-ethanol produced using a new process that converts cellulosic biomass by enzymatic hydrolysis. Options for sourcing the feedstock either from agricultural and wood waste, or, if the demand for bio-ethanol is sufficient, from cultivation are examined. The main focus of the analysis was to determine its potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a 10% blend of this bio-ethanol with gasoline (E10) as a transportation fuel. SimaPro 4.0 was used as the analysis tool, which allowed a range of other environmental impacts also to be examined to assess the overall relative performance to gasoline alone. All impacts were assigned to the fuel because of uncertainties in markets for the by-products. This LCA therefore represents a worst case scenario. It is shown that E10 gives an improved environmental performance in some impact categories, including greenhouse gas emissions, but has inferior performances in others. Whether the potential benefits of the bio-ethanol blend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will be realized is shown to be particularly sensitive to the source of energy used to produce the process steam required to break down the cellulose to produce sugars and to distil the final product. One key area where improvements in environmental performance might be derived is in enzyme production. The LCA profile helps to highlight those areas where positive and negative environmental impacts can be expected. Technological innovation can be directed accordingly to preserve the benefits while minimizing the negative impacts as development progresses to commercial scales.

Today, it is widely recognized that optimization methodologies should account for the stochastic nature of engineering systems and that concepts and methods of life-cycle engineering should be used to obtain a cost-effective design during a specified time horizon. The recent developments in life-cycle engineering of civil and aerospace structures based on system reliability, time-dependent reliability, life-cycle maintenance, life-cycle cost and optimization constitute an important progress. The objective of this study is to present a brief review of the life-cycle reliability-based optimization field with emphasis on civil and aerospace structures.

Environmental impact assessment of design and manufacturing decisions have received significant attention in the recent years. Researchers have not only focused on industrial waste minimization and chemical substitution in processes or products, but also on the effect of product design decisions on the environment during the manufacturing, in-use and end-of-life stages of the product. This research investigates the applicability of Bayesian decision networks to study the impact of design decisions on the life cycle performance, including environmental friendliness, of a product. Bayesian decision theory provides a normative framework for representing and reasoning about decision problems under uncertainty. A framework for integrated analysis of the product life cycle is presented. We discuss the specification of domain models for wide range of processes, such as manufacturing, recycling and disposal, an action model, and an utility model.

Life-cycle engineering (LCE) is a decision-making methodology that considers performance, environmental and cost requirements for the duration of a product. This methodology is becoming a norm for global companies that want to remain competitive. To facilitate and enhance the application of LCE methodology to industrial products, a number of computer tools or utilities that require minimal user input, and hence run automatically in the background of the design process, have been developed. These utilities are intended to provide a feedback on an evolving design without impeding or hampering the design process. There exists a need to continue research on the development of tools that simulate flows in a life-cycle and optimize them. These tools should be based on the client-server model base on the Internet to facilitate the e-Transition.

Engineering changes are inexorable and can arise at any phase of the product life cycle. To capture the maximum market shares manufacturers have to effectively and efficiently manage engineering changes. This paper provides overview of ECM and perspective on the published academic literature related to product engineering changes. The aim is to give an idea and understanding about the engineering changes in product to the new researchers. Engineering changes can be taken in both aspects such as an opportunity to enhance the product performance and as a burden, resulting in a rework, which utilizes resources, time and cost. It is paramount that the impact of engineering changes be identified, assessed and implemented as early as possible. Different methods/tools have been devised to better understand the engineering change phenomenon and to control the changes. ECM can help to mitigate the potential of negative consequences arising from uncertainties during the product life cycle. In this paper the significant aspects of the engineering changes have been discussed and highlighted the methods/tools that are proposed by the researchers. The review shows the prominence of ECM in a product life cycle. Introduction Increasing competitiveness in the market due to fast growing change environment forces the manufacturers to pursuit ways to produce a high quality product at the lowest cost with the minimal lead time. To reduce the risk and the manufacturing time, companies promoted to focus on the incremental products. Customers desire reliable & efficient products, therefore they esteem tried & tested artefact with improved parts. In case of incremental products, retaining the existing design significantly reduces the cost and also the manufacturing lead time. Most of the new designs are not developed from the scratch, but designed through modifications and changes to the existing design [1]. These products have new functions, characteristics and performances that rely on the existing product design. In the initial product designing stage, the designers come across the intimidating task of assessing the engineering parameters which effectively improve the product performance. These parameters should be focal point throughout the product development. Traditionally the designers select theses parameter based on the knowledge gained by experience. For identifying the key engineering parameters during the conceptual design a domain-independent methodology has been proposed in [2] by Kaldate. The information regarding product parameters increases in quantity and also in quality as the design proceeds and provides a better insight of the design issues. The advice “do it right the first time” is illusory and far away from real life [3]. Engineering changes have great influences on product developing and production activities, hence making product development very costly and time consuming [4]. In the early decades the engineering changes were predominantly seen as a problem. People were reluctant to implement the change management system. From the past few decades it has been seen that industrialist take it as an opportunity and source of innovation & creativity [5, 6]. Engineering changes can be taken into account as a driving force for incremental product improvement. Keeping in view the above, knowledge attained from engineering changes is very helpful and useful for the design and development of the product. In manufacturing, today’s markets and customers wish change so International Conference on Education, Management and Computing Technology (ICEMCT 2015) © 2015. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 1679 quickly [7]. Engineering changes arises frequently for continual improvement of the system/product and determines approximately 70 to 80% of the final product cost [8]. The paper is structured in such a way that in Section 2, definitions of the key terminologies used in the field of ECM are presented. Section 3 states the methodology to carry out the literature review. Section 4 describes definition and categorization of ECs, objective of ECM and handling approaches. In section 5, product architecture has been elaborated. Section 6 gives an idea about the change propagation. Section 7 discusses the engineering change process. In section 8, tools and methods to support ECM have been presented. Section 9 gives the summary of the paper. Definitions There are some key terminologies which are used in the field of ECM and are defined as follows: • Function is the intention or purpose of the artefact [9, 10] and Hubka called it, duty of the artefact [11]. • Behaviour describes what the artefact does and how it achieves it functions or purpose [12]. • Structure describes distinctive variables that identify the artefact and their interactions [13] and structure can also be defined as a set of entities connected in a meaningful way [14]. • Impact is the “average proportion of the design work that will need to be redone if the change propagates” [15]. • Likelihood is defined as the “average probability that a change in the design of one sub-system will lead to a design change in another by propagation across their common interface” [15] Methodology The research commenced with a rigorous literature review on current ECM practices. To conduct the literature review, specific to the product, different journals and conferences were focused for review of the topic. Literature selection Inorder to carry out the review on the selected topic the word “Engineering change” was searched in the articles title and abstracts. The search engine “Google Scholar” and the journals to which the access is provided by the university were the main source for downloading the related papers. Total 278 papers were downloaded for the literature review from different sources. Journals and conferences The collection of publications has been done by consulting multitude of journals and conferences related to the product design and ECM as a source for literature review. The main journals which were used as a source for downloading the related papers/articles are: Journal of Engineering Design, Computers in Industry, Research in Engineering Design, IEEE Transaction on Engineering Management, Computer Aided Design and Applications, Design Studies, International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Computer and Industrial Engineering, Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering etc. Conferences proceedings which were included in the literature review are: International Design Conference (IDC), ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conference, CIRP International Conference on Life Cycle Engineering, Conference on System Engineering Research, International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED) and International Design Structure Matrix Conference (IDSMC). Distribution of Publications over year 278 papers were downloaded for review which contains 55% of the papers from the journals and 45% of the papers were from conferences. Only 04 papers were found from the resources discussed above before 1990 and they are not included in the graph. The publications distribution in figure 1 shows increase until 2007. 31 publications out of 278 were published in 2007 with a peak of 12.16 %. There is a decrease in the publication after 2007 upto 2013. In 2014 there is again a slight rise in the graph with 15 publications. From this graph it has been concluded that interest in the field of ECM steadily increased till 2007 where it get its peak. Form 2007 onwards upto 2013 there

Today's product development is fragmented across various disciplines all with their own fields of expertise. Maintaining overview in consequences and implications of decisions is difficult, since many stakeholders are involved. To optimise the product development, many methods are developed based on optimising the process of information exchange, which is required in analysing consequences and implications of potential decisions. This information exchange is often by means of communication between stakeholders. This paper describes an approach that is not based on the process, but on the product information itself, since the final product system is key in product development. The suitability of employing the Actor-Artefact network in aligning decisions across different disciplines by focusing on the evolving product information is investigated.

This chapter gives overview on life cycle assessment (LCA) relevant to nanotechnology, nano-materials, and manufacturing. It highlights the nanotechnology development and its implication to the environment and resources, which is followed by describing the roles of life cycle engineering, detailed by presenting LCA methods, and software tools. These are demonstrated by a comprehensive case study conducted in an EU project. Finally, particular issues relevant to the application of LCA to the development of nanotechnology, nano-materials, and corresponding manufacturing processes are raised and discussed.

This chapter describes the implementation of life cycle engineering, a life cycle management component that focuses on the environmental performance improvement, in the context of automotive design for environment. The purpose of life cycle engineering is to derive measurable technical targets from life cycle assessment (LCA). This approach is described using the example of lightweight design. The progress in this methodology is the ability to calculate measurable targets – such as weight reduction, fuel reduction on a vehicle level, or the amount of secondary material – on the basis of LCA results. It is important to note that LCA is not used here for comparing the environmental performance between competing materials or technologies. Instead, life cycle engineering, as a helpful management tool to support design for environment, shows the technical roadmap of measures that must be taken in order to assure environmental progress over the entire life cycle. In doing so, this tool supports putting life cycle assessment results into business practice.

Thorough environmental observation and a series of life cycle consideration have been performed to underpin the development of the environmental criteria of a new EU Eco-label product group following the voluntary and selective European Environmental Award Scheme based on Regulation EC 1980/ 2000. Since April 2002, the European Eco-label is available for the Hard Floor Coverings product group, subsequently also called ‘HFC’. The Eco-label translates environmental awareness on products for indoor and outdoor covering materials such as ceramic and clay tiles, concrete paving units, terrazzo, agglomerated and natural stones into a new market-based environmental policy tool. As a matter of fact, the HFC ecological criteria development has been positively concluded based on a the study of the Italian National Environment Protection Agency (ANPA, Agenzia Nazionale per la Protezione dell’Ambiente) with the technical support of Life Cycle Engineering (Turin, Italy), that had been entrusted with this task by the European Commission, DG Environment. The stakeholders involved in the ‘Ad Hoc Working Group’ activities included European Eco-label Competent Bodies, some of the most important manufacturers, consumers and environmental associations at a European level. In December 2001, after eighteen months of concerted work with all the interested parties in the European Union Eco-label Board (EUEB), the final vote of criteria by Member States enabled the publication of the EU-wide valid criteria and the elaboration of an application pack (user manual) in late March 2002.

In view of the upcoming 2002 World Summit in Johannesburg, sustainable development is a topic of high priority in South Africa. Although the South African competency in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) has grown to some extent over the last ten years, South African industry and government have been slow to realise the benefit of LCAs and LCE as tools to support cleaner production and sustainable development. However, the local application of these tools, as well as considerations during their use, differs from practices in developed countries. The applications of LCAs and LCE, the type of organisations involved and the limitations and common problems associated with these tools in South Africa are discussed.

In order to improve the design of products and reduce design changes, cost, and time to market, life cycle engineering has emerged as an effective approach to address these issues in today's competitive global market. As over 70% of the total life cycle cost of a product is committed at the early design stage, designers can substantially reduce the life cycle cost of products by giving due consideration to the life cycle implications of their design decisions. During the early design stages there may be competing requirements. In addition, detailed information is scarce and decisions must be made quickly. Thus, both the overhead in developing parametric life cycle cost (LCC) models for a wide range of concepts or requirements, and the lack of detailed information make the application of traditional LCC models impractical. A different approach is required because a traditional LCC method should be incorporated in the very early design stages. This paper explores an approximate method for providing the preliminary life cycle cost. Learning algorithms trained to use the known characteristics of existing products can perhaps allow the life cycle cost of new products to be approximated quickly during the conceptual design phase without the overhead of defining new LCC models. Artificial neural networks are trained to generalise product attributes and life cycle cost data from pre-existing LCC studies. Then, the product designers query the trained artificial model with new high-level product attribute data to obtain an LCC for a new product concept quickly. Foundations for the learning LCC approach are established, and then an application is provided. This paper has been developed to provide designers with LCC information to guide them in conceptual design.

After the emergence of Life Cycle Engineering as an effective tool for analyzing the various environmental impacts of a product in the stages of designydevelopment, manufacturing, service and disposal, a necessity arises to analyze the cost information pertaining to these impacts. There are possibly many approaches to analyze and evaluate the cost criteria involved in the different life cycle stages of any product or investment. This paper attempts to review many of those approaches methodologically, and specifically outline a practical framework that provides a new tool for evaluating all the eco-costs and developing a cost

Concurrent Engineering (called also simultaneous or life cycle engineering) is a philosophy that attracts increasing attention of systems science community and systems analysts working in various application areas. In the area of mechanical systems design concurrent approach attempts to build a high quality end product at low cost with shorter development times. It does this through careful consideration given to conceptual product design and overlapping of the stages within all life cycle spectrum. This paper looks at the former, i.e., the process of concept development. A model of concept development in a concurrent engineering environment is presented. The model is based on a number of case studies and provides an initial platform for a system analyst attempting a product development task in a concurrent environment.

To pursue sustainable technology as a key responsibility for chemical engineers, we have presented an infrastructure for integrating element technologies of life cycle engineering (LCE). By that, we can evaluate and make a rational decision on LCE in chemical industries. With this point of view, we attempt to integrate a product life cycle model developed earlier together with various data bases, simulators and applications on G2 that is known as a development environment of intelligent systems. We also aim at facilitating a collaborative research accessible from global horizon through the Internet. Finally, through implementation associated with the management of plastic wastes, we have shown that more elaborate concerns on LCE is possible through our idea.

Purpose – This paper aims to present parametric models to estimate the environmental footprint of the selective laser sintering (SLS)’ production phase, covering energy and resource consumption as well as process emissions. Additive manufacturing processes such as (SLS) are often considered to be more sustainable then conventional manufacturing methods. However, quantitative analyses of the environmental impact of these processes are still limited and mainly focus on energy consumption. Design/methodology/approach – The required Life Cycle Inventory data are collected using the CO2PE! – Methodology, including time, power, consumables and emission studies. Multiple linear regression analyses have been applied to investigate the interrelationships between product design features on the one hand and production time (energy and resource consumption) on the other hand. Findings – The proposed parametric process models provide accurate estimations of the environmental footprint of SLS processes based on two design features, build height and volume, and help to identify and quantify measures for significant impact reduction of both involved products and the supporting machine tools. Practical implications – The gained environmental insight can be used as input for ecodesign activities, as well as environmental comparison of alternative manufacturing process plans. Originality/value – This article aims to overcome the current lack of environmental impact models, covering energy and resource consumption as well as process emissions for SLS processes.

Sustainable manufacturing aims to increase efficiency and offset negative impacts throughout the life cycle of products. A myriad of standards pertaining to various aspects of a product's life cycle exist; however, it is often difficult for non-experts to navigate and comprehend these standards. The objective of this paper is to describe a classification system for capturing the requirements, concepts and terminology from those standards at the intersection of life cycle and manufacturing process domains. The classification is implemented as an ontology using the Web Ontology Language (OWL). We then use an ontology visualization tool we have developed, to help users navigate and understand the information in these standards more easily. Such an ontology can support life cycle assessment activities or sustainability decision-making in the life cycle stages, such as replacing energy consuming processes and equipment with sustainable practices. In addition, the ontology can support the development of new life cycle and manufacturing standards. The ontology provides a holistic picture of the requirements to enrich comprehension of and compliance to the growing number of sustainable manufacturing standards.

Many decisions, both conscious and unconscious, have to be made during a product development process. In reaching a decision, it is essential to take the consequences of the different alternatives into consideration. To assess preconditions and consequences of decisions, an actor network can be used. An actor network is a combination of interrelated entities, representing multiple individuals and/or organizations. By adding characteristics to these actors and their relation, aspects like supply chain and life cycle issues can be addressed.This publication describes the basic building blocks of an actor network from a generic and abstract viewpoint. From these essential building blocks, the construction of the overall actor network is described. Examples are used from the field of content-packaging combinations, as well as aspects from life cycle assessments to illustrate the intended fundamental functionality. In the bigger picture, the use of the actor network in the context of product-packaging combinations aims at achieving lasting balance in product-packaging networks.

Engineering a system for its whole life cycle involves the phase of designing the system, when all requirements for function, capabilities, life cycle and societal (economic, ergonomic, aesthetic, law conformance, etc.) properties should be established, and as far as possible fulfilled. Designing need not be just an intuitive and idiosyncratic procedure—it can be made more rational. Design Science has set itself the goal of providing a comprehensive theory. Theories cannot be directly applied. Methods and models derived from the theory can be applied if the relevant parts of the theory are understood (at least at an awareness level) by the applying designer, and the actions and documentation are demanded by design management. The resulting improvement in the process will also render the design process more transparent, and open to review and audit, as demanded by the ISO 9000 series of quality standards. Some contacts with the disciplines of systems engineering and life cycle engineering are indicated. Most formal models of design processes are formulated for novel design problems. They can help to clarify the problem in a more formalized way. Design Science can effectively be applied to novel or redesign problems.

The specification and deployment of enterprise modelling and component-based system concepts to facilitate the distributed engineering of automotive manufacturing machines is reported in this paper. The main areas of research reported in the article cover (a) the design and prototype development of new forms of component-based engine assembly and transfer machines (b) life cycle engineering approaches that improve the change capability of component-based automotive machines and (c) the design and implementation of an engineering environment that enables distributed engineering teams to achieve (a) and (b). The concepts, approach and environment have been developed and are being formally assessed with reference to current practice within an ongoing engineering programme. A consortium of leading automotive companies is collaborating on the research project with the aim of producing a new range of engine products that will be used in various makes of vehicle around the globe.

Associated with sustainable technology, in this paper, we have developed a prototype system for evaluating life cycle engineering of chemical products. For this purpose, giving a whole framework on the G2 software known as a graphical development environment of intelligent system, we have built a product life cycle model as one of its element technologies. Practically it is described as an object-oriented model having a hierarchical structure like IDEF0 model. Furthermore, due to the interdisciplinary nature of the problem-solving, highlighting an importance to facilitate a continuous improvement and to employ distributed information technologies, we also engage in developing a few related element technologies. Through a case study associated with the farm sheets, we have revealed that the developed system can analyze easily various kinds of life cycle scenarios just by giving certain values via a graphical user interface, and support strategic decision making on the life cycle engineering of chemical products.