Product life

Whatever form of incremental development is considered, the benefits to the host facility should not be gained at the expense of reduced returns for the new project. Incremental and satellite projects can in many situations help to extend the production life of an old field or facilities, but care must be taken to ensure that the economics are transparent. 

The failure rate changes over the lifetime of a population of devices. An example of a failure-rate vs product-life curve is shown in Figure 9 where only three basic causes of failure are present. The quaUty-, stress-, and wearout-related failure rates sum to produce the overall failure rate over product life. The initial decreasing failure rate is termed infant mortaUty and is due to the early failure of substandard products. Latent material defects, poor assembly methods, and poor quaUty control can contribute to an initial high failure rate. A short period of in-plant product testing, termed bum-in, is used by manufacturers to eliminate these early failures from the consumer market. 

In 1993, the United States medical device industry employed 282,000 people, averaging a growth rate of about 4% since 1975. Research and development spending in this industry outpaced that in virtually every other industry. Over 7% of sales were spent on research and development in 1993, amounting to a Httle less than 3 bHHon. This rate reflects both the rapid rate of innovation and short product life-cycle. Medical devices become obsolete far more rapidly than pharmaceuticals (qv), forcing companies continuously to be innovative. 

The business climate of the 1990s is different from the past. Factors such as increased competition, a global marketplace, rapid technical shifts, and greatly compressed product life cycles constantly open new opportunities for plastics in general and reinforced plastics in particular. Reinforced plastics have become widely accepted for particular appHcations because they offer a combination of design, performance, and economic benefits to the user. These materials have had a proven record of success since the 1940s. 

The annual rate of straight-line depreciation of the fixed-capital investment Cfc, from 1,000,000 at startup to a salvage value S, of zero at the end of a productive life s of 10 years, is given hy... 

Requirement for product life, durability, and maintainability objectives to be included in design inputs... 

Performance tests shall consider and include as appropriate product life,... 

The standard requires that design input requirements relating to the product be identified and documented and product life, reliability, durability, and maintainability objectives be included in the design inputs. 

This element supports the use of statistical techniques at all stages in the product life cycle, and differs only in areas of focus for quality versus ESH/PSM management systems. 

Nelson, W.B., Basic Concepts and Distributions for Product Life, General Electric Technical Information Series, Report No. 74CRD311, 1974. 

Metaphase Metaphase offers a Web-centric information infrastructure that harnesses its customers intellectual capital to drive product innovation and manage the complete product life cycle. 

Although more people are being fed than ever before, there are also more malnourished humans than ever before. Thus, more than 1.6 billion of the 5.3 billion people living today are malnourished and do not have access to adequate supplies of food (3), Clearly, a malnourished person cannot lead a fully productive life. The plight of these people is more serious than just a lack of adequate food, for many are ill with disease and/or carry heavy loads of parasites. For example, a survey of school children in Kwale District, Kenya showed that 96% were infected with hookworms, 50% with roundworms, 95% with whipworms, and 40% with schistosomiasis... 

For an example of a control chart see Fig. 1.31 and Sections 4.1 and 4.8. Control charts have a grave weakness the number of available data points must be relatively high in order to be able to claim statistical control . As is often the case in this age of increasingly shorter product life cyeles, decisions will have to be made on the basis of a few batch release measurements the link between them and the more numerous in-process controls is not necessarily straight-forward, especially if IPC uses simple tests (e.g. absorption, conductivity) and release tests are complex (e.g. HPLC, crystal size). 

From the environmental impact point of view service extension gives the supplier a greater involvement in the product life-cycle, with the potential to help manage the product through the life-cycle. 

Packaging trends involve lower cost, more functionality, volume growth, shorter product life-cycles and increased value. Rigid plastic packaging now dominates markets which were previously the exclusive realms of materials such as glass and metal, despite the fact that some technical aspects of plastic are still inferior to those of such traditional materials, e.g. the failure of plastics to withstand high temperatures without deforming, or barrier properties of a standard comparable to that... 

The project will progress in stages, beginning with a waste audit carried out by an audit team. The audit team consists of a waste audit expert, a sector specialist, a financial expert, an economist/ marketing expert, and an expert in product life-cycle assessments. The audit team also supports the project in its different stages. 

Over the past decade, the battery industry, partly in response to public concerns and legislation, has played an active role in finding solutions to these problems. Industry efforts have touched on every stage of the product life cycle. 

Figure 1.1 Product life cycles. (Adapted from Sharratt PN, 1997, Handbook of Batch Process Design, Blackie Academic and Professional by permission).

Return on Investment (ROI) Return on investment (ROI) is usually defined as the ratio of average yearly income over the productive life of the project to the total initial investment, expressed as a percentage. Thus, from Figure 2.2... 

Each product system consists of a variable number of processes involved in the product life cycle. However, the product under consideration is often related to other processes that may no longer be important for the LCA study. The system boundary serves to the separation of essential and non-essential processes of the product life cycle. Since the choice of system boundaries significantly affects LCA study outcomes and in addition, its intensity and complexity, system boundaries should always be well considered and clearly defined. The choice of system boundaries is carried out with regard to the studied processes, studied environmental impacts and selected complexity of the study. Not-including any life cycle stages, processes or data must be logically reasoned and clearly explained [32]. 

The life cycle of the material, which can be different from that of the product. Materials are produced and have a functional use in a product, after the products life span the materials may be recycled to enter another life cycle, possibly in another product. 

Additives can have a significant impact in a products life cycle as shown by the case studies on plastics and printed matter/paper. Omitting them can therefore be... 

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