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Home , Product lifecycle, Sustainable engineering

Product Lifecycle Approach for

N. Duque Ciceri 1, M. Garetti 1, S. Terzi 2 1Department of , Magament and Industrial , Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, Milano, Italy, 2Department of Industrial Engineering, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Viale Marconi 5, Dalmine, Bergamo, Italy, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract Starting from the framework of Management (PLM), sustainability should be provided by continuous sharing of information among the different product lifecycle phases. A PLM system provides lifecycle knowledge generated by PLM systems through product lifecycle activities. The paper aims at presenting how PLM systems represent a very important foundation for achieving a more sustainable paradigm for life, a more , engineering, , use and disposal of products.

Keywords : Sustainability, Sustainable Engineering and Manufacturing, Product Lifecycle Management

1 INTRODUCTION Within this view, Sustainable Manufacturing is defined From the semantics of the word, sustainability is a quality as, an instance of Sustainable Engineering, meaning to that permits to preserve, to keep, to maintain something. apply scientific knowledge to design and implement of When something is sustainable, it is able to be kept. In products, materials, systems, processes, etc. that take the past, the term was mainly environmentally-oriented, into account constrains coming from the 4 pillars of i.e. as the quality to sustain the environment. However, in sustainability to develop solutions for the design, current literature, sustainability is defined with three operational and organizational activities related to dimensions: environmental, social, and economical; often products, processes and services in the manufacturing adding a forth one, [1]. Therefore, what is sector. meant with sustainability is to be able to keep human As known, sustainability will be a major issue for the next development in all these dimensions, which is often decades. The awareness of limited resources availability, referred as sustainable development. Sustainable of problems related to pollution, of increasing demand of development is not a new concept, one of the most used goods, energy and materials from the already developed definitions is the one given in 1987 by the Brundtland and the new developing countries and, as a Commission as “the development that meets the needs of consequence of these factors, the increase in costs of the present without compromising the ability of future scarce resources, all are calling for a new paradigm of generations to meet their own needs” [2]. life, overcoming the obsolete consumerist model of From the basics, engineering is a key driver of human modern societies. Assuming to maintain the current level development. Looking at the role of technology in human of well being of developed countries as a reference development, engineering is the key driver of technology- target, the shift to the new life’s paradigm will be based human development which is leveraging on a large something like a Copernican revolution. Really, this shift from many individual disciplines (i.e. will be extremely difficulty, requiring revolutionizing a well industrial, mechanical, electrical, etc). Henceforth, established model. Social, cultural and also Sustainable Engineering can be defined as the way of psychological implications will be involved from one side; applying engineering for sustainability purposes. This while from the other tremendous improvement of current concept is depicted in figure 1, where Sustainable will be required to enable this kind of Engineering is seen as a layer of engineering oriented change. To reach such revolution, the product concept approaches, methods and tools crossing the four pillars itself should be totally re-shaped, especially taking into of Society, Economy, Environment and Technology for account a lifecycle view: product design for a low-priced achieving sustainability oriented results. and clean production, for a long and safe use and for an integral should be provided. Not only the Environment Society Technology product design is required to be substantially and Economy continuously improved and innovated, but the development of new materials and an overall redesign of production processes will be needed; entailing for example, the development and subsequent processes of totally new production processes made of a sequence of small intelligent, clean and energy saving steps. In such a vision, Sustainable Manufacturing will surely become one of the most relevant topics in the next engineers’

interests. Figure 1: Sustainable Engineering dimensions.

CIRP Design Conference 2009 The present paper aims at investigating the climbing role • Middle-of-Life (MOL), including distribution (external of Sustainable Manufacturing for engineers and logistic), use and support (in terms of repair and designers, taking care of the general framework of maintenance). In its life, a product passes from the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). For this purpose, company’s hands to service suppliers (e.g. the paper is organized as follows: transportation suppliers, but also after-sales • Section 2 defines the main elements of the general assistance suppliers), to arrive in the customer’s framework of PLM. hands. These passages could happen many and many times, in reiterative ways. Product usage data • Section 3 summarizes the relevance of Sustainable are to be collected, transformed and used for various Manufacturing, also conducting a state-of-the-art of purposes in the service chain. For example, data on the tools and methods for its deployment. product behaviour during the usage phase can be • Section 4 investigates the role of PLM in Sustainable fed back in BOL and used for design improvement. Manufacturing, also defining a research agenda for • End-of-Life (EOL), where products are retired – such a topic. actually recollected in the company’s hands (reverse • Section 5 concludes the paper. logistic) – in order to be recycled (disassembled, remanufactured, reused, etc.) or disposed. Recycling and dismissal activities require and provide useful 2 PRODUCT LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT information on product components, materials and In recent years, the competitive pressure coming from the resources from/to the design and manufacturing opening of markets has strongly affected the companies stages. Many different actors are involved in this approach to product development: shorter lifecycles and phase (company’s service suppliers; customers, explosion of product variety have been the main institutions, etc.). For many products (e.g. consequences, together with an ever standing , electronic goods), customer’s requirement for low production costs. Reduction of time to environment sensibility has a relevant role to the market, collaboration and delocalization have been the management of such phase. companies’ answers to these issues, which were achieved by restructuring the organizational models of Beginning of Life Middle of Life End of Life product design and production, while leveraging on the new ICT (Information and Technology) tools for collaborative product design, development and Design Manufacturing Distribution Use Support Retire production, made available by recent technology progress. The PLM paradigm emerged as “a product

Reverse centric model, ICT supported, in which product Product Process Plant Internal External Repair Maintain Recycle Dismiss Production logistic data, are shared among processes and in Design Design Design logistic logistic the different phases of the product lifecycle for achieving Figure 2: Reference model for product lifecycle phases top range performances for the product and related (adapted from [4] and [5]). services” [3]. PLM is already well known in the ICT market, even if unlike other technology solutions PLM is not a point The PLM concept is certainly a question of data solution or an off-the-shelf tool. Instead, it is grounded in visualisation and transformations, where ICT plays a the philosophy of connectedness of knowledge and seeks fundamental role. However, PLM comprises other two to provide “the right information, at the right time, in the important levels: processes (where data flow among right context”. PLM is physically enabled by the actors/resources with relative competences, inside and integration of a variety of applications, outside an organization), and methodologies (practice like Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools, Product Data and techniques adopted along the processes, using and Management (PDM) platforms, and Enterprise Resource generating product data). These three elements (ICT, Planning (ERP) and (SCM) Processes, and Methodologies) are the fundamentals of solutions. These applications are offered by many market the PLM concept, evolving along the lifecycle phases of vendors with different backgrounds and expertises, for the product (Figure 3). supporting enterprise , along diverse phases of an ideal product lifecycle. Such a term

– lifecycle – generally indicates the whole set of phases ICT (tools, which could be recognized as independent stages to be interop. standards, architectures, etc.) passed/followed/performed by a product, from “its cradle BOL MOL to its grave”. According to [4], product lifecycle consists of three main phases (Figure 2): • Beginning of Life (BOL), including design and

manufacturing. Design is a multilevel phase, since it Product comprises product, process and plant design. Generally, a design action is performed in a recursive way, identifying requirements, defining reference

concepts, doing a more and more detailed design Methodologies Processes (actors, activities, (practices, procedures, competences, techiniques, etc.) and performing tests and prototypes. Today’s organisation, etc.) knowledge-intensive product development requires a computational framework that enables the capture, representation, retrieval and of product and process knowledge. Manufacturing means production of the artefacts and related plant internal EOL logistic. At this stage, product information has to be shared along the production chain, to be synchronized with future updates. Figure 3: Reference model for product lifecycle management [3].

2.1 PLM as a “system of systems” the delivery of a product to a customer. As a consequence, actors involved in each lifecycle phase BOL phase deals with product design and manufacturing. have made decisions based on incomplete and These two main activities have an intrinsic difference: inaccurate product lifecycle information of other phases, product design is a recursive and reiterative intellectual which has led to operational inefficiencies. activity, where – generally – designers and engineers might find solutions for given problems. On the contrary, manufacturing is a repetitive transactional-based activity, BOL MOL EOL which might concretize the decision taken by others. For this main reason, design and manufacturing are supported by a plethora of different ICT PLM tools: Usage status information authoring tools (CAD, etc.) and collaborative product BOM information Maintenance history Recycling and Reusing development platforms (PDM, etc.) in the design activity, Product order information Product information parts or component Info for maintenance and information and a set of enterprise applications (ERP, SCM, CRM, service etc.) in the manufacturing and distribution activities. Then, Production system during BOL phase, PLM is basically a design support configuration system (Figure 4): product design data might be created A product service and managed efficiently in order to be distributed to the support right actors at the right time for efficient manufacturing. PLM system MOL and EOL phase could provide useful information, analyzing data gathering from the field. It might be (a system of systems) honestly affirmed that in the market an entire PLM system Figure 5: PLM in the MOL phase. supporting all the processes of BOL phases is not currently provided by a single vendor (and probably it will not exist in the next future), but PLM might considered In spite of its vision, PLM has not yet received much like a “system of systems”, where diverse vendors just attention so far from industry for the MOL phase because provide a piece of a larger PLM picture. there are no efficient tools to gather product lifecycle data over the whole product lifecycle. Single applications exist for supporting specific activities within these phases (e.g. BOL MOL EOL maintenance and after sales supporting tools), but a comprehensive system is not existing.

Usage data Recently [4], thanks to the advent of product identification Maintenance history technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification Production status information Updated BOM by repair Design knowledge (RFID), PLM has now powerful tools to implement its Technical support information vision. The product identification technologies enable Updated customer Product lifetime requirements products to have embedded information devices (e.g. Status of EOL product Recycling / Reuse rate RFID tags and on-board computers), which makes it Dismantaining information possible to gather the whole lifecycle data of products at Environmental effect any time and at any place. Thus, in the near future, the A product design information PLM system Support system whole product lifecycle could be visible and controllable, allowing all actors of the whole product lifecycle to (a system of systems) access, manage, and product related information. Figure 4: PLM in the BOL phase. Especially, the information after product delivery to customers and up to its final destiny could be gathered,

without temporal and spatial constraints. This way, BOL MOL phase deals with the real life of the product when it information related to product design and production is in the customer’s hands, while EOL deals with its could be used to streamline operations of MOL and EOL. “death”. During these phases, many actors are in touch Furthermore, MOL and EOL information could go back with the product: logistic service suppliers, customers, easily to designers and engineers for the improvement of after sales service suppliers, recycling service providers, BOL decisions. etc. All these actors perform their repetitive activities, generally without exchange much detailed information with other actors, being measured in term of process 3 SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING efficiency. Similarly to the BOL phase, during MOL and From a general perspective, sustainability can be seen EOL phases, PLM is basically a service support system as a critical business issue driven by factors outside of (Figure 5 as example of the MOL phase), composed by a the industry’s control, unlike many other business issues. plethora of subsystems: product data are collected from Multiple constituencies such as shareholders, regulators, the field using various tools, in order to monitor and consumers, customers, NGOs (Non Governmental control the life status of the product, while information Organisations) are demanding that companies address it. from BOL phase are needed to analyze and understand Sustainability intercepts with every aspect of the behaviors and structures of the product. business. Consumer rely on a wide range of More and more product data management during these inputs, such as agricultural products, two phases is becoming an unavoidable aspect, since water, forestry and marine fish stocks. Consumer regulations and legislations are taking care of diverse products and packaging are also one of the largest product data in order to improve customer safety and contributors to solid waste, compared to other industries. security. In particular, this is already a relevant aspect in Sooner or later in each industrial sector, it will not be process industries (i.e. pharmaceutical, food and enough for product manufacturers simply to design their beverage, etc.). However, in spite of such increasing products for disposal and recycling: manufacturers will be interests of normative offices, during MOL and EOL responsible for the actual disposal and recycling, until the phases, the information flow becomes less and less end of the life of their artefacts (as many regulations complete. For the majority of today's products (e.g. currently in place at an European level and in the road of consumer electronics, household , ), it legislation in most of the other industrialized countries, is fair to say that the information flow breaks down after i.e. Table 1), facing the needs of Sustainable Manufacturing. Regulation Environmental Requirements Principle Description ELV Regulation for automobiles and Reuse Reuse means using waste as a raw End of Life electronic devices make the material in a different process without product producer responsible for any structural changes recycling and disposal (e.g. 85% Recycle Recycling is a resource recovery method recycling/recovery rates in terms involving the collection and treatment of of weight by 2006 and 95% by waste products for use as raw material in 2015). the manufacture of the same or a similar WEEE Requires manufacturer to have a product. Waste Electrical and program to take back and recycle Recover Recovery is an activity applicable to Electronic products such as TVs, computers materials, energy and waste. It is a Equipment and cell phones; register the process of restoring materials found in product and the the waste stream to a beneficial use, collection, treatment, recovery, which may be for purposes other than and disposal. the original use. RoHS Mandates companies to not Repair Repair means an improvement or Restriction of use of manufacture products with more complement of a product, in order to certain Hazardous than a maximum concentration of increase quality and usefulness before Substances a number of certain substances reuse; it decreases consumption, such as lead, mercury, cadmium because the product’s life is extended. among others. Regeneration Regeneration is an activity of material REACH Designed to ensure that 30,000 renewal to return it in its primary form for Registration, banned chemicals do not make usage in the same or a different process. Evaluation, and their way into a product at any point in the supply chain. Re Remanufacturing is defined as Authorization of manufacturing substantial rebuilding or refurbishment of Chemicals machines, mechanical devices, or other EuP EuP is a product which requires objects to bring them to a reusable or Energy using or produces energy The Directive almost new state Product does not introduce directly Factor X, A direct way of utilizing metrics in binding requirements for specific Factor 4, various activities that can reduce the products, but does define criteria Factor 10 throughput of resources and energy in a for setting product environmental given process. The overall aim of Factor requirements (i.e. energy X is to enable society to achieve the consumption). same or even better quality of life Table 1: Summary of some of current environmental improving human welfare, while using legislations. significantly less resource inputs and causing less ecosystem destruction. The Factor X concept proposes X times more It is clear that sustainability is not a new topic, even if it efficient use of energy, water and has reached a relevant attention in the last two-three materials in the future as compared to years. The diverse dimensions of sustainability and the the usage today. diverse declinations have been already investigated and Waste Activities involving the handling of Solid, developed. Also, Sustainable Manufacturing has been Management liquid and gaseous wastes originating obtained many attention from the industrial and research from the industrial manufacture of communities, as the plethora of strategies, methods, products (i.e. 4Rs: Reduction, Reuse, procedures and tools existing in literature demonstrate. Recycling and Recovery) The following classification (adopted from [6]) outlines Reduction Practices that reduce the amount of some of the many contributions that have been waste generated by a specific source developed in the ambit of sustainable manufacturing through the redesigning of products or practices, in terms of Principles, Tools and Strategies: patterns of production or consumption. • Principles (Table 2): are fundamental concepts that serve as a basis for actions, and as an essential Table 2: Principles of Sustainable Manufacturing. framework for the establishment of a more complex (Adopted from Glavi č, 2007 and Robert, 2002) system. • Tools (Table 3): contain a group or cluster of principles related to the same topic, building a more complex system, showing how to apply specific Tool Description practices in order to contribute to improved for Also known as Eco-design is the performance. Environment integration of environmental aspects into • Strategies (Table 4): Each consists of approaches product design with the aim of improving and systems connected together that are to be met in the environmental performance of the order to incorporate the principle of sustainability into product throughout its lifecycle (e.g. everyday business activities. design for recycling). [6]

Green Identifies manufacturing methods that Manufacturing minimize waste and pollution during product design and production. [7]

Green The design of chemical products and satisfies standards and requirements Chemistry processes that eliminate or reduce the [16] use and generation of hazardous substances. [8] Total Quality a method of applying total quality Waste Measures or techniques that reduce the Environmental management approaches to Minimization amount of wastes generated during Management corporate environmental strategies. industrial production processes. [6] TQEM supports continuous Zero Identification and development of new improvement of corporate Emissions value-added products from existing environmental performance. waste streams or under-exploited by- Developed by a coalition of 21 products, creative search for completely companies that operate in a variety of new educts and products, and industry sectors and share best implementation of breakthrough practices. The four basic elements of technologies. [9] TQEM: Customer identification (i.e. Life Cycle Methodological framework for estimating environmental quality is determined Assessment and assessing the environmental by customer preferences), impacts attributable to the lifecycle of a Continuous improvement, Doing the product, such as climate change, job right first time (i.e. elimination of stratospheric ozone depletion, ozone environmental risks and a Systems (smog), etc. [10] approach. [17] Cleaner The continuous application of an The Natural Step a method of reaching consensus Production integrated preventive strategy to programme about sustainable futures. The theory process products and services to make has given its name to a global efficient use of raw materials, including network which describes itself as 'an energy and water, to reduce emissions international organization that uses a and wastes, and to reduce risks for science-based, systems framework humans and the environment. [11] to help and communities understand and move Life Cycle A comparative decision making tool that towards sustainability. [18] Management evaluates the difference between products or processes to arrive at the ISO and the ISO14000 series is a family of most economically and environmental environment environmental management possible option in a systematic business standards. [19] decision framework. [12] Zero Waste A design principle that includes EMS Set of management tools and ‘recycling’ but goes beyond recycling by Environmental principles designed to guide the taking a holistic approach to the vast Management allocation of resources, assignment flow of resources and waste through Strategy of responsibilities and ongoing human society. [6] evaluation of practices, procedures Green Environmentally responsible or 'green' and processes, and environmental procurement is the selection of products concerns. [20] and services that minimize Eco- The European Union's voluntary environmental impacts. It requires a Management programme which enables company or organization to carry out an and Audit organizations within the EU and the assessment of the environmental Scheme (EMAS) European Economic Area to seek consequences of a product. [13] certification for their environmental management systems. Effective from Table 3: Tools for Sustainable Manufacturing. 1995. [21] Environment, Programs driven by occupational Strategy Description health and health and safety regulations Safety (EHS) including environmental issues Pollution A strategic goal for effective Programmes needed to be incorporated into Prevention (P2) environmental protection. P2 operational practice. [22] techniques are designed for the reduction of the quantity and toxicity SA 8000 Standards in social responsibility of end-of-plant waste. P2 for: Child labour; Forced technologies have been developed labour; Health and safety; Freedom for technology change, material of association and collective substitution, in-plant recovery/reuse bargaining; Discrimination; and treatment. [6] Disciplinary practices; Working hours; Compensation; Management Industrial Systems-oriented study of the systems. [23] Ecology physical, chemical, and biological interactions and interrelationships Responsible Chemical industry’s global voluntary both within industrial systems and Care performance guidance system. [24] between industrial and natural ecological systems. [15] Table 4: Strategies for Sustainable Manufacturing. Environmentally Emerging discipline concerned with

Conscious developing methods for Manufacturing manufacturing products from Sustainable Manufacturing has been already investigated conceptual design to final delivery, in deep, as literature and in industrial practices and ultimately to end-of-life, that demonstrate, even if a comprehensive approach doesn’t exist. Moreover, as the global conditions are revealing every day, sustainability is still not one of the first key factors in industrial decisions. In their day-by-day decisions, companies cannot easily take into account Sustainable Manufacturing, which is more and more affected by lifecycle considerations. Additionally, this happens at global level and so requires the consideration of related technical, operational, societal and cultural issues. Many efforts have been made in the past twenty years for improving product development and lifecycle management. However, many of these efforts have been disconnected. Approaches like PLM for integrating and sharing product data can be of great help in controlling and supporting sustainability issues. As the next section aims at illustrating, in deep, PLM, [25] being the accepted setting for product design and management has the PLM potential to incorporate all the lifecycle considerations needed for a sustainable development. Figure 5: PLM can provide support to sustainability 4 PLM FOR SUSTAINABILITY (adapted from [26]). Sustainability has an important global dimension and most of the major challenges cannot be solved in one In terms of evolution of PLM for Sustainable isolated region of the world. The so-called “civilized” world Manufacturing, there is an urgent need to identify and is made of many products, consuming a large amount of retrieve decades-old product information for delivering global resources. This “way of life” is based on products service and sustainability along the product lifecycle. As (for living, for transportation, for dressing, for eating, etc.), mentioned, sooner or later in each industrial sector, it will which might be designed, manufactured, used, not be enough for product manufacturers simply to maintained, recycled, dismissed. As Global Sustainability design their products for disposal and recycling: Indicators show clearly [26], current patterns of mass manufacturers will be responsible for the actual disposal production of cheap goods and over consumption of and recycling, till the end of the life of their artefacts. products with a short use cannot be evidently sustained. Evidently, sustainability has a social responsibility impact, In spite of this vision, for making PLM an efficient but its attainment is matter of practical implementations: approach for Sustainable Manufacturing, many issues sustainability can be achieved through optimization of the are still open, as well as some challenges might find a use of resources along the product lifecycle, while stable solution. Some of the most relevant open issues retaining quality of products and services, but are the followings: optimization and quality of product related processes are • It is a matter of fact that sustainability (and its strongly based on the use of information. For this reason, dimensions) is more and more assuming a relevant PLM represents a very important approach for achieving role in our Societies. Even if a positive trend in a more sustainable way of work and life, a more sustainability dissemination is on going, many efforts sustainable development, manufacturing, use. Being PLM might be spent to communicate such a concept to an ICT able to support product data, many stakeholders: not only users/customers might information and knowledge sharing, it can be the be involved, but more and more companies (in terms foundation of the needed to comply with of manufactures and suppliers) have to understand sustainability requirements (Figure 5). In particular, PLM sustainability in its wider dimensions. This question could enhance design in the BOL phase, as well as still remains a relevant open issue about sustainable provide new services for the MOL and EOL phases. development and manufacturing. Sustainability in the context of the product lifecycle can be • Within such social increasing interest on seen as an optimization of all the activities belonging to sustainability, different business models might be the product lifecycle: a more sustainable development declined within diverse industrial sectors, taking care could be reached managing efficiently processes and of the diverse lifecycle stages. In particular, one-of-a- information. For example, during BOL PLM can support a kind productions (e.g. ships building, tailored sustainable product development providing a common products) have relevant differences with many-of-a- system in which the relevant product information is kind ones (e.g. commodities). Such differences stored, managed and actually retrieved by the applicable constitute a number of relevant open issues for lifecycle phases. The PLM system can be used to store sustainability and PLM. and manage relevant information regarding resources • (such as energy and renewables, ground and soil, water, Sustainability entails an integration perspective. etc.) and materials (such as hazardous substances, Sustainability is the final result of the interaction waste and recycling, etc). In fact, a lifecycle approach among many economic actors; interoperation of all means to evaluate a product/service beginning with product related domains is a pre-requisite to the material extraction, continuing with manufacturing and evaluation and support of sustainability issues. use, and ending with recycling and disposal. This • As a matter of fact, a huge amount of data is information generation and sharing can be housed by generated during product usage. These data must PLM in terms of providing the place to be created, to be be archived, filtered, extracted and transformed. stored, to be processed and to be properly allocated. These operations require an efficient data to be developed for each PLM system/tool in operation. Such product data management still remains an open issue, which might be solved to support a real product sustainable development. • In terms of ICT, PLM is no more than a database problem, which physically enables a product-centred

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