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This paper addresses post-manufacturing issues in life-cycle engineenng design. Whereas design for manufacture has drawn significant industry interest, issues such a serviceability and recyclability have not attracted as much attention This paper describes a systematic methodology to enhance the serviceability and recyclability of products in its early stages of development The challenge in serviceability and recycling is to deal with the uncertainty in service needs and incorporate a recycling strategy that is acceptable when the product life is over. The core idea is to analyze the estimated life-cycle costs of the product, to relate the cost drivers to the attributes of the candidate designs, and to provide suggestions for improvement The paper proposes a representation scheme that the designer can use to describe layout designs. Service mode analysis (SMA) takes the information contained in this representation and analyzes the life-cycle service cost. Ongoing research adapts this method to recyclability Further, design compatibility analysis (DCA) matches cost analysis with general design guidelines and suggests improvements. The paper uses specific examples to illustrate these techniques.

This study develops a method to capture the broadest customer preference in a product line while minimizing the life-cycle cost of providing variety. The paper begins with an overview of product variety and its importance in overhead costs: supply chain, equipment and tooling, service, and recycling. After defining the product structure graph as a representation of variety, the paper introduces an approximate measure for the customer importance and life-cycle cost of product variety The cost measure utilizes the concept of late point identification which urges standardization early in the manufacturing process and differentiation at the end of the process. The variety importance-cost map allows engineers to identify cost drivers in the design of the product or the manufacturing system and seek improvements. The refrigerator door example illustrates the concept. On-going work seeks to validate and enhance the method with several companies from different industries.

This paper presents a systematic method applicable at the early stages of design to enhance life-cycle quality of ownership: Advanced Failure Modes and Effect Analysis (AFMEA). The proposed method uses behavior modeling to simulate device operations and helps identify failure and customer dissatisfaction modes beyond component failures. The behavior model reasons about conditions that cause departures from normal operation and provides a framework for analyzing the consequences of failures. The paper shows how Advanced FMEA applies readily to the early stages of design and captures failure modes normally missed by conventional FMEA. The result is a systematic method capable of capturing a wider range of failure modes and effects early in the design cycle. An automatic ice maker from a domestic refrigerator serves as an illustrative example.