Product life cycle through

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. 

Within the broad framework of sustainable development, we should strive to maximize resource efficiency through activities such as energy and nonrenewable resource conservation, risk minimization, pollution prevention, minimization of waste at all stages of a product life-cycle, and the development of products that are durable and can be re-used and recycled. Sustainable chemistry strives to accomplish these ends through the design, manufacture and use of efficient and effective, more environmentally benign chemical products and processes". 

Timber can be viewed as a classic renewable material. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and utilize water and sunlight to produce a material that can be used in construction, to produce paper or to provide chemical feedstocks, with the production of oxygen as a byproduct. Furthermore, at the end of a product life cycle, the material constituents can be combusted, or composted to return the chemical constituents to the grand cycles . In essence, timber use represents a classic example of a cyclic materials flow, mimicking the flows of materials through natural cycles. Provided that we manage our forests well and do not harvest beyond the capacity of the planet to provide timber, we have at our disposal an inexhaustible resource available in perpetuity. 

We will continuously analyze and improve our practices, processes and products to reduce their risk and impact through the product life cycle. We will develop new products and processes that have increasing margins of safety for both human health and the environment... 

Chemical manufacturers, formulators, and distributors must make health, safety, and environmental protection an integral part of the product. Several guides have been created to help develop and implement policies and practices that ensure protection through the product life cycle. One of these, developed by the Epoxy Resin Formulators Group of the Society of Plastics Industry, has been found to be most useful for the epoxy formulator.6... 

Fixers. These are individuals or organizations that improve the product or service during its life cycle through repair, modifications, corrections, additions, or deletions to better meet end-user expectations. 

The topics of this book continue to be discussed in forums like the CP AC Summer Institute and the satellite workshops sponsored by CPAC. A successful CPAC sponsored workshop was held in Rome, Italy in March, 2006, and that concept will be continued with other workshops in the U SA and Europe that will be cosponsored by CPAC. Developments in the various areas of micro-instrumentation are embellished in gatherings like the CPAC Summer Institute and CPAC Satellite workshops. Additional value is obtained when synergistic collaborations result from the discussions. The concept of creating a forum where different technical disciplines from industry, academia, and government come together is important to moving a technical field ahead. This is particularly true in the microinstrumentation field, which has the ability to affect many aspects of a product life cycle - from the discovery, through development, and into production. 

Interfaces for Product Data Exchange The description of product data over the entire product life cycle can be effectively improved through the use of computer-supported systems. For this reason, uniform, system-neutral data models for the exchange and archiving of product data are desired. These enable the exchange of data within CAD systems and other computer-aided applications. 

Before examining the approaches to recycling textiles, it is important to place this discussion in the context of the product life cycle. The methodology of LCA is one approach to quantitatively assess the environmental advantages of recycling fibre. An LCA typically considers the energy, water and chemical impacts of a product system from cradle (raw materials) through to production, distribution, use by the consumer and disposal. Formal LCA follows ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards. It requires determination of the functional unit of the product or raw material in question to be assessed, for example T kg of cotton fibre , or one viscose blouse . Importantly, LCA is conducted under defined system boundaries. For example, the LCA may be... 

The fastest to develop will apparently be labelling systems that will certify the entire product life cycle as well as take account of the social and ecological aspects of production, and those that ensure high integrity of labels across the product life cycle, for instance through transactional or scope certificates. 

There is a nearly endless number of possible environmental impacts causally interconnected through environmental impact pathways or cause-effect chains (see example in Fig. 1 for the impacts associated with emissions of N- and P-compounds causing eutrophication of the environment). Life cycle assessment attempts to address all relevant impacts of a product life cycle (ISO 2006) and has therefore had to develop a systematic approach to the classification of envi-rmunental impacts and the quantitative expressimi of how large an envirOTunental impact is caused by an emission or a physical interventimi. 

The uncertainties through the product life cycle begin from the design intent to the inspection activity. In the ISO TS 17450 Part 2 (Humienny 2009), the notion of the uncertainty is generalized to the specification and the verification. The transition between the functional requirements and their inspection is ensured by some models and tools. The total uncertainty of this transition is divided into correlation uncertainty, specification uncertainty, and measurement uncertainty. Correlation uncertainty characterizes the fact that the intended functionality and the controlled characteristics may not be perfectly correlated. The specification uncertainty characterizes the ambiguity in the specification expression. And the measurement uncertainty is however the best known type of uncertainties. It is considered by the metrologists and well described in GUM. 

Through this allocation of explicit uncertainties to the different phases of the product life cycle, we can directly relate decision making at the milestones of the product hfecycle to the management of uncertainly. 

Based on the statistical prognosis and the specifications of possible damage during the product life cycle in the early phase of product construction, it is feasible to conclude actions to optimise the product and its subcomponents. The actors OEM and supplier of the value added network benefit primarily from this information, because they can optimise their products and subcomponents. Furthermore, it is possible to reduce technical failure analysis costs through drawing selected samples of damaged components out of the field. 

---