Life cycle management and assessment: approaches and visions towards sustainable manufacturing

Thinking in terms of product life cycles is one of the challenges facing ma nufacturers today: efforts to increase efficiency throughout the life cycle do not only mean extended responsibility of the parties concerned. Economi cally successful business areas can also be explored. Whether new service c oncepts are required, new regulations have been passed or consumer values a re changing, the differences between business areas are disappearing. Life cycle management (LCM) considers the product life cycle as a whole and opti mizes the interaction of product design, manufacturing and life cycle activ ities. The goal of this approach is to protect resources and maximize effec tiveness by means of life cycle assessment, product data management, techni cal support and, last but not least, life cycle costing. This paper shows t he existing approaches of LCM and discusses their prospects and further dev elopment.