Chapter 3: Sustainable Products and Future Reuse

Title: Filling the lack of PLM strategies when considering the ecological and economical aspects of products in the automotive industry

Author(s): Adel Frad, Christoph Herrmann

Address: Institute of Machine Tools and Production Technology (IWF) -Technical University Braunschweig. Langer Kamp 19b, 38100 Braunschweig, Germany | Institute of Machine Tools and Production Technology (IWF) -Technical University Braunschweig. Langer Kamp 19b, 38100 Braunschweig, Germany

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2008 pp. 200 - 211

Abstract/Summary: The actual landscape of methods, models and tools adopted in a PLM exposes two lacks: The first one is the linking of the ecological life cycle evaluation of the product in the development process (life cycle assessment) and the second one is the assessment of the economical performances of a product in its end of life phase. Although the existence of Design for Recycling (DfR) and Design for Environment (DfE) tools, companies are often using them just for reporting purposes at the end of the product design or as isolated solutions with no integration in the development process. This paper describes a framework allowing the economical and ecological optimization of the entire vehicle product from the early phases of the development process. It is based on a set of methods and models integrated in a software tool that, considering the particularities of the product development process in the automotive industry and implementing exchange standards with the authoring applications CAx, ERP and with the LCI (Life Cycle Inventory) databases, fulfills these requirements.

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