Product Life Cycle Design Research Articles

Product Life Cycle Design for Circular Businesses

Product Life Cycle Design for Circular Businesses

Development of a voxel-based CAD system for upstream life cycle design and its application to LCA

The comprehensive design of product life cycles is a promising approach to realizing circular manufacturing systems. However, design support systems that can be used for the life cycle design during upstream stages have not been established. The purpose of this study is to develop an easy-to-use CAD system for the early stages of product life cycle design. The system supports creating a product model in voxel format and a life cycle process model as a process network in an integrated manner. The voxel models make it easy to create the rough shape of products and quantify the mass of each component for LCA. An LCD monitor's life cycle was designed using the proposed CAD tool. Fourteen design candidates were created and LCA was performed to compare the designs from the perspective of life cycle environmental impact. Through the case study, we confirmed that the tool is a practical system that can quantitatively examine what design improvements contributed to the reduction of environmental impact at an early design stage before creating detailed 3D-CAD models.

Mass customization and mass personalization meet at the crossroads of Industry 4.0: A case of augmented digital engineering

AbstractAfter mass production and then mass customization, the time is almost ripe for mass personalization. The goal is to offer unique products designed for the needs of each customer. However, production in larger series of products also has its advantages, and the promise of “lot size one” is still far from being the norm in several sectors of the economy. As a result of an action research project in a small household ceramic producer, this paper explores the potential of a hybrid strategy. Augmented digital engineering is adopted to (1) ensure customer participation along the entire product design lifecycle, (2) maintain the benefits of modularization and low cost, (3) minimize the waste of time and materials during product design, and (4) seek a minimum trade‐off between customer desires and engineering strategy. For theory, our work describes Industry 4.0 technology's role in achieving individual customer interaction and value co‐creation in hybrid strategies of mass customization and mass personalization. For practice, we present an example of technological architecture to implement augmented digital engineering in Industry 4.0, accessible to scenarios of hand‐intensive work and creative design processes.

Digital Twins along the product lifecycle: A systematic literature review of applications in manufacturing

Background: The evolution of product expectations in the era of mass customization implies an improvement and a better control of individualized creation and production processes throughout the product lifecycle. The application of the digital twin (DT) seems to be a favoured solution in this context, but its study during the lifecycle of a product has only been partially evoked in the literature. Methods: The purpose of this state-of-the-art article is to identify current trends of applications of the digital twin concept in the literature under two main dimensions: its nature regarding the interaction structure between digital and physical objects (defined as: Pre-Digital Twin, digital model, digital shadow, and digital twin), but also its applications, along the product lifecycle (Design, Production, Operation, Disposal). To achieve this analysis a systematic literature review was carried out. The publications selection was based on the presence in this of a case of application of a digital twin with a focus in the Manufacturing sector. Within this review, 188 scientific papers were compiled and analyzed. Results: Results showed that although the term digital twin is widely used, the deployment of DT technologies in manufacturing is still at an early stage as most of the digital twin applications were in fact prototypes focused on the real-time observability of the physical system, either for optimization or predictive maintenance. Moreover, regarding the product lifecycle, most of the applications have been focused on the production and operational phases whereas those at the design and disposal phases are still limited. Conclusions: This paper presents an original approach to the study of digital twins, not focusing on a single application area or lifecycle phase but which aims to establish future perspectives on the use of digital twins along the lifecycle.

Mathematical Model and Simulation for Improving Brake, Bump and Roll Steers in Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV)

Due to recent infrastructural developments and emerging competitive automotive market in India, there is seen a huge shift in customer demand and vehicle drivability pattern for small commercial vehicles. Various factors contributing to driver’s fatigue include driver negligence, inappropriate driving habits and vehicle inherent design error due to which a driver is forced to make frequent steering wheel corrections so as to make the vehicle run in a straight line. Thus, optimization of steering, suspension and front axle geometry becomes important for improving the overall vehicle drivability and reducing the driver fatigue. Mentioned herewith are the major kinematic characteristics in a vehicle which plays vital role for ensuring vehicle improved drivability – Brake steer, Bump steer, Roll steer and Ackerman Geometry. As on today, the above analysis for deriving optimized linkages hard points for steering, suspension and front axle system are done in customized Multi body dynamics software’s like ADAMS/Trucksim. Although the derived hard points in such MBD software’s are precise yet there are several drawbacks in such approach like increase in overall project time plan, mainly due to the vehicle packaging issues for the proposed hard points and also these software customized license and AMC are quite high which increases the overall operating cost of a project. In this paper, an approach has been developed so as to derive these linkages hard points through mathematical calculation and kinematic simulation model in product design Catia platform itself. This helps the designer to derive the optimized hard points of linkages for “n” number of design iterations at the concept stage itself. Thus, this design methodology saves not only on the project design cost but also it reduces the overall product design lifecycle and gives the respective designer to choose the optimum hard point based upon the vehicle packaging feasibility Brake steer, Bump steer, Roll steer, Catia 2D layout, Camber, TCD, Ackermann error.
 

A Formal Analytical Framework for IoT-Based Plug-And Play Manufacturing System Considering Product Life-Cycle Design Cost

Technological advances in the Internet of Things (IoTs) and the evolution of manufacturing models applied in industrial environments increase the use of concepts, such as plug-and-play in intelligent manufacturing systems for customized products. However, plug-and-play manufacturing modes are subjected to dynamic changes in both products and resources during the runtime phase. Hence, traditional model-based formal verification methods cannot guarantee system dependability before and after the reconfiguration. In addition, customized manufacturing is a product-driven process, which requires product- and equipment-based modeling and analysis to be considered during the product life-cycle management. In this article, a model-data-driven (DD) framework for the formal analysis of production resources is proposed. An IoT-based DD technology is combined with a model-driven approach to ensure dependability verification of formal models in the operational production line phase through real-time resource status feedback. The proposed method is verified experimentally, using a smart factory experimental platform. The results show that the proposed method reduces the time-cost of the formal modeling phase by at least 75%.

Decision-making for Product Life Cycle Design Solution Based on Multi-layer Constraints Satisfaction Problem

Decision-making for Product Life Cycle Design Solution Based on Multi-layer Constraints Satisfaction Problem

How does sharing economy advance cleaner production? Evidence from the product life cycle design perspective

The sharing economy is a recent worldwide development; however, its impact on sustainability remains unclear, particularly in regards to the advancement of cleaner production. In order to explore the potential and contribution of specific sharing economy business practices in the transition to cleaner production, this study empirically analyzed how China's free-floating bike-sharing (FFBS) improved environmental sustainability through optimization of product life cycle design. Specifically, the impact on climate change and human health of three generations of shared bike products was quantitatively analyzed by using product environmental footprint (PEF) approach. The results show that sustainable product lifecycle design can effectively improve the sustainability of FFBS. Through optimized design and product upgrades, the environmental impact intensity of FFBS has decreased by approximately 25.09% –34.34%. This causes FFBS to gradually evolve from exerting negative impacts on climate change to achieving considerable climate benefits (22.18 CO2-eq/pkm). The environmental benefits on ozone depletion and photochemical ozone formation also increased by about 2.46 μg CFC11eq/pkm and 85.77 mg NMVOC eq/pkm with the upgrade of shared bikes from the first generation to the third generation. In addition, although the negative effects of FFBS on respiratory inorganics, non-cancer human health effects and cancer human health effects have been significantly reduced, the corresponding positive environmental benefits still need to be achieved by significantly increasing the utilization rate of shared bikes. Furthermore, this suggests that the sustainable production life cycle design of FFBS can follow the principles of safety, ease of maintenance, durability, ease of use, universality, resource conservation, and recyclability. This empirical study can not only help authorities, managers and the public better understand the contribution of the sharing economy to cleaner production, but also provides new insights and valuable references for improving the sustainability of the sharing economy.

A three-level consensus model for large-scale multi-attribute group decision analysis based on distributed preference relations under social network analysis

Large-scale multi-attribute group decision analysis (LS-MAGDA) is common in practical problems. As a type of preference relation, distributed preference relation (DPR) can express the preferred, non-preferred, indifferent, and uncertain degrees of one alternative over another. In LS-MAGDA, conflict between assessment-based clustering analysis and consensus reaching process (CRP) may occur. Different levels of consensus measurement and feedback mechanism are not fully discussed in previous studies. To solve these problems, a trust-confidence analysis (TCA) framework, which takes into consideration both the trust relationship and self-confidence based on social network analysis (SNA), is proposed to let clustering analysis and CRP not influence with each other. Decision makers’ social status and willingness to modify opinions can be reflected in TCA, which facilitates consensus adjustment and reaching process. A consensus measure framework at attribute, alternative and global levels is then proposed. Additionally, consensus feedback mechanism with different identification and direction rules from attribute level to global level is analyzed considering the consensus degree and importance of attributes. The identification rule becomes looser with the increasing of consensus status and decreasing of attribute weights. An illustrative example of product life cycle design is presented to demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed method in dealing with realistic problems.

Challenges of sustainability in Indian manufacturing sector: a critical review

Sustainability has become the critical constraint in any industry around the globe. It defines the new measuring standard that would help to improve the social, economic and environmental aspects in an industry. The paper intends to bring into limelight the various challenges/factors/barriers affecting the implementation of sustainability in manufacturing industries of India. The factors have been articulated from a vast literature survey encompassing journals from 1994 to 2019. The research extends further to enquire practitioners, industry professionals and academicians in India through a close-ended questionnaire. The responses, when analysed, yielded 24 factors, which were identified as major hindrances to Indian context of sustainable manufacturing. Some of the major factors are product life cycle design and 6R. Each factor has been elucidated in the respective context. The authors have tried to classify these factors into seven major factor-groups affecting sustainable manufacturing. The results of the survey indicate that the 24 factors are hindrances or challenges to the Indian manufacturing sector. This research is a preliminary attempt to revolutionise the transformation of Indian manufacturing practices into sustainable ones.

Product design lifecycle information model (PDLIM)

In response to rapidly changing market and customer needs, product design and development (PDD) is evolving into a human-centred and data-driven design paradigm. The design environment gets more open often involving crowdsourcing and the design process becomes more complex, considering product family design along product whole lifecycle development, and needing more data support. Therefore, it is critical to effectively capture, share, and manage design-related information in such a complex design environment. From this perspective, it is a prerequisite to have a proper product design lifecycle information model (PDLIM) to guide information gathering, sharing and management. To the best of our knowledge, currently, there lacks such a PDLIM to support effective PDD, though digital twin (DT) technology shows a great potential of supporting product lifecycle information collection and management. In this paper, the overall structure of the proposed PDLIM is firstly developed to frame in all main product lifecycle stages and the corresponding key phases for structurally capturing and storing necessary data along a product lifecycle. Secondly, key design information items against the main product lifecycle stages and their corresponding key phases are explored from literature reviews and case study analyses. Thirdly, the necessity of the identified information items in the PDLIM is qualitatively evaluated by two case studies. Finally, the PDLIM is further evaluated by applying formal object-role modelling (ORM) to demonstrate how design information items are used and interacted in exemplary design interaction scenarios, and to approve that it can be formally described and managed as an information model. The evaluation results show that the PDLIM is feasible to be adapted in a crowdsourcing-combined PDD process for supporting design management, reviewing, quality control, and next round product redesign and improvement.

Designing Shift Handoff Software: Clinical Learners and Design Students Collaborate Using the "Design Thinking" Process.

Handoffs in patient care responsibilities between practitioners are common in the hospital setting. Because inadequate communication can lead to patient harm, professional organizations have published recommendations and practical guides to support standardized workflow. However, currently available electronic medical record (EMR) tools rarely provide the requisite functionality to support work and often suffer from major usability flaws. Our internal medicine residency program sponsored a quality improvement initiative to improve the design of handoff tools. To support this initiative, our medical informatics program collaborated with a school of architecture and design to identify requirements and ideate interface prototypes. In this article, we describe how we used Design Thinking principles and methods to inform our product design lifecycle, create novel designs, and teach inter-professional students health systems science concepts.

REWAS 2022: Developing Tomorrow’s Technical Cycles

REWAS, a sustainability driven conference within The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS), has a long history of bringing together academia and industry to exchange and reflect on the latest technology developments in the process optimization and waste management fields. The first edition of REWAS (REcycling and WASte symposium) took place in 1999. The scope of the conference has since then broadened to include environmental sustainability, resource management and manufacturing efficiency, liaising these developments to the metallurgical industry in a broader societal and systemic context. The 2022 edition of REWAS which will be hosted at the TMS 2022 Annual Meeting & Exhibition in Anaheim, California, provides a resolute outlook towards Developing Tomorrow’s Technical Cycles. Within the metals and materials industry, technical cycles refer to the ensemble of strategies and processes applied to the development of sustainable product loops with the intent to eliminate waste and instead rethink, reuse and upcycle products. The success of technical cycles requires strengthening our circular approach for product life cycle design by providing guidelines and implementation examples to the developers, designers, policy makers and business managers. REWAS promotes such strategies within a priority sector identified for Circular Economy enablement: raw materials supply and management. REWAS 2022 consists of six symposia, and abstract submissions are expected in summer 2021. Topics include recycling and sustainability within the aluminum industry, specifically on casting technologies, recovery of metals from complex products and systems, decarbonization of the metallurgical and manufacturing industry, sustainable production and development perspectives, as well as automatization and digitalization for advanced manufacturing. REWAS 2022 will also include an honorary symposium for Dr. Diran Apelian, whose contributions in metals processing, aluminum and battery recycling, sustainability, education in materials science and more have shaped the path for sustainable materials processing.

Adaptive decision-making method of life cycle options by using process data collected over multiple life cycle stages

The appropriate design of product life cycles is crucial for the realization of a sustainable society. Since Alting proposed the concept of life cycle engineering in 1993, many concepts, approaches, methods, and tools have been proposed and developed for the purpose. On the other hand, rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT) technology enables the development, operation, and maintenance of a new generation of products: so-called ‘smart’ products. One characteristic of smart products is the use of data collected throughout the product’s entire life, making it possible to improve energy and resource efficiency. In this context, many efforts have been devoted to developing a variety of algorithms, methodologies, and data models for supporting IoT-enabled engineering activities such as maintenance, production planning, and logistical planning. However, there exists a gap between life cycle engineering and emerging IoT-based technologies; that is to say, little research has addressed the life cycle design of products (including end of life treatment stages) using IoT-based technologies, whereas most IoT-based research focuses on improvement of individual life cycle stages such as production, operation, or maintenance. It is not currently clear how IoT-based technologies can practically contribute to the adequate design of product’s life cycle as a whole. As a first step toward answering this question, this paper proposes a process data model that captures the complex interdependency of product data over multiple life cycle stages. We additionally present a method based on this data model for determining a product’s appropriate life cycle options. Finally, through an illustration of the method with a simplified case study, we discuss the advantages and the future development needs of IoT-based life cycle design.

Research on Product Design Efficiency Improvement Based on Computer Information Technology

With the progress of society, computer technology has gradually penetrated into all aspects of life. The product design industry is an industry that emphasizes innovation and efficiency. In the process of new product design, the product details and existing problems need to be fully considered. This requires further optimization and innovative design. Among them, computer-aided technology can smoothly apply information technology to the forefront of product design life cycle and provide intellectual innovative solutions for the design and application of new products. The intervention of computer technology will greatly improve the efficiency of product design and help promote the development of product development companies.

Sustainable life cycle design aspects: how aware are material scientists?

When developing new materials many aspects of sustainability are relevant, especially when the ultimate goal is mass production. More efficient energy storage and transmission are important parts of a larger product life cycle design and the confines of the circular economy, including environmental and social concerns. For example, due to environmental, geopolitical, and health concerns, it is important to choose materials that are easily accessible, as opposed to materials requiring complicated extraction, storage, and transportation methods. Equally important is the abundance of the material, as the mass production and use of a product are not sustainable if its raw components are scarce. This requires material scientists to be aware of how their design affects the later life cycle stages of the materials they develop. Very few studies cover whether material scientists take these type of questions into consideration. To resolve this, material scientists were questioned on various sustainability aspects. Results show that most of the questioned scientists have little to no awareness of what effects mass production of their developed materials might have regarding greenhouse gases or the workforce, or what their material’s recyclability or longevity might be. The results indicate that these questioned material scientists are not fully aware of several imperative sustainability aspects and do not fully consider the impacts of their designs. To increase instilling and evaluating awareness of sustainability aspects on life cycle design, two improvements are: increasing sustainability education by lifelong learning, and adding sustainability concerns as a required component to grants and funding.

Design for manufacture and assembly of a polycentric paediatric prosthetic knee

Design for manufacture and assembly is a critical step in the product design life cycle. In this study, design for manufacture and assembly theory was applied to the design of a polycentric paediatric prosthetic knee to resolve assembly and manufacture issues prior to product prototyping. Assembly time and efficiency prior and subsequent to design for assembly analysis was calculated. By combining redundant parts and improving the ease of alignment, orientation, and insertion of various parts through modification of part features, a 10.1% increase in assembly efficiency was achieved. Design for manufacture analysis was then performed for die casting of the component. Undercut features were removed and replaced with the use of standard components, reducing the assembly time of the component by reducing the complexity of parts. Proposed design changes were verified using finite element analysis to simulate the loading conditions of a polycentric prosthetic knee as per the ISO10328:2006 standard for methods of testing prostheses. An overall improvement of 13.6% in assembly efficiency was achieved after the design for manufacture and assembly analysis. The improvement is due to the decrease in assembly insertion time and eliminating small parts and parts in areas that were difficult to access. The reduction in assembly time will directly reduce the labour cost for assembly of the manufactured product. This case study illustrates how design for manufacture and assembly theory can be applied to the design of biomedical equipment to reduce the need for prototype re-work and the consequent costs.

Methods for measuring patient preferences: an update and future directions.

The current review highlights the growing number of available methods used to measure patient preferences and discusses how this impacts preference research in rheumatology. Spurred by the growing role of preferences in regulatory decisions and drug development, researchers have begun applying preference methods to study questions beyond the clinical context. We explore these trends, provide case studies highlighting changes in measuring patient preferences, compare strengths and weaknesses of common stated-preference methods, and discuss considerations for the future use of these methods. Early literature on patient preferences often mimicked clinical practice, asking whether treatment A is better or worse than treatment B for a patient. Early applications of patient preference methods in rheumatology aimed to value different attributes of treatments, but remained focused on informing clinical questions. Spurred by interest in preferences by regulatory agencies and patient-centeredness throughout the product lifecycle, there are now a wide array of methods available to measure preference. Although these different preference methods have strengths and weaknesses, they serve to highlight the broad number of questions that could help rheumatology beyond the clinical context. Researchers in rheumatology now have the opportunity to better serve diverse stakeholders by considering how these methods could aid in clinical trial design, regulatory policy, and other elements of the medical product life cycle.

Product Life Cycle Design for Sustainable Value Creation: Methods of Sustainable Product Development in the Context of High Value Engineering

This study proposed a framework for sustainable product development in the context of high value engineering, using life cycle based approaches combined with methods of sustainable value modeling and analysis. A Sustainable Value model was proposed based on the understanding of Value from economic, social and environmental perspectives. Then, a QFD-based approach of life cycle scheming driven by sustainable value requirements was proposed for generating product concepts and life cycle plans of total high value, while Life Cycle Simulation was employed for modeling complicated close-loop type product life cycles and evaluation of sustainable values. The proposed framework may help bring experts in fields of product and process engineering, industrial management and ecological assessments to a common vision, and therefore accelerate design convergence for more sustainable products, processes and business.

Backtracking Algorithm-based Disassembly Sequence Planning

Disassembly sequence planning (DSP) is one of the core research themes of product life cycle design. Effective DSP can reduce product life cycle costs as well as their environmental effects and provides a theoretical future foundation for recycling and improving sustainability performance. The problem with current heuristic artificial intelligence algorithms is that the outcome may have a local extremum; therefore, it may not generate the exact or even the approximate optimum solution. For a specific sequence planning problem, some algorithm parameters need to be adjusted in order to generate a perfect solution. In this study, the objective is to create new DSP by integrating a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) based on backtracking algorithms. First, the relationship between DSP and the CSP was analysed. Then, the DSP was converted into a CSP based on a disassembly constraint graph (DCG). The solution flowchart of DSP and the CSP-associated algorithms, based on backtracking algorithms, are presented in this article for a dishwasher recycling case study. The outcome of this study shows that the created method can effectively find all of the feasible disassembly sequences as well as the optimum sequence for recycling. Ultimately, these results can be effectively applied to more appliances for future use.