An integrated product and process development methodology: Concept formulation

Life cycle engineering, or integrated product and process development (IPPD ), is a new trend of research and application in industry and academia. In our previous work, a generic framework was proposed to provide a means for an integrated consideration of the performance optimization issues in a pro duct's lifetime. Based on this generic framework, this paper proposes and p resents an integrated product and process development methodology. Importan t concepts of the methodology are introduced, and an application procedure is provided to illustrate the systematic application of the methodology to real product and process development. Finally, we provide a brief report of our application of the methodology to personal computer development. (C) 1 999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.