Toward a life cycle design guideline for inverse manufacturing

For achieving the sustainability, it is essential to establish sustainable product life cycles that minimize resource consumption and discharge of emissions and wastes, while keeping and increasing wealth. This paper discusses fundamental issues of life cycle design, which is defined as integrated design of business strategy, life cycle strategy; product, and processes. For guiding determination of life cycle strategy; this paper clarifies applicability of life cycle options; especially, issues of component reuse are discussed including lifetime, costs, value and quality; and marginal reuse rate. As a result, life cycle design is indispensable for making reuse feasible. Finally; this paper points out some future issues for sustainable closed-loop product life cycles.