Aims and scope

The aims of the WG 5.1 are to understand the whole life-cycle impact of products in product development. One of the major issue is also to analyze and take into account the interaction of products with the environment, which is recognized as of enormous importance for the sustainability of future economic development while understanding of the life-cycle costs of products (the total costs of ownership) and their interaction with users is vital as company portfolios move toward product-service systems (PSS) and services assume greater importance in economic life.

The objective is to propose new approaches to product development that take account of the increased importance of life-cycle issues, and for support systems that allow the information and data associated with products to be developed and sustained through the product life-cycle.

The scope of the WG 5.1 will concern all aspects of Product Development for the whole life-cycle, including rapid product development and concept validation, CAD tools for early design, collaborative product development, capture and reuse of design information, feedbacks from supply chain, usage and product recycle management, etc. A list of the main aspects is the following:

• Global product development (global products, global teams, global processes)
• Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) (Product life-cycle phases, PLM systems architecture, Distributed PLM systems)
• Product Life-cycle Engineering concepts and methods (Design for the life cycle, Life-cycle analysis, Through-life aspects – feedback from users and service, Knowledge Lifecycle Management and long-term knowledge sustainment, Product-Service Systems)
• New organizational issues within Product Lifecycle Engineering (Collaboration strategies, Business strategies and benefits, Infrastructure and environment, Support tools, Collaboration environments and platforms, Virtual and simulation environments, Infrastructure and implementation processes, Interoperability and security issues)
• Generic issues (Value, Risk and cost management, Emerging standards and best practices, Metrics and benchmarking, performance evaluation, Educational and training approaches)