Abstract
The life cycle of products is an increasingly important evaluative factor in successful product design optimization. However, the effective integration of life cycle issues into the product design process requires the inclusion of a number of factors that express product life cycle details in the optimization formulations. These factors are often hierarchical and have constraint conditions that until nowhave prevented their concurrent evaluation. In order to integrate life cycle factors in complex optimization problems, this paper proposes an optimization method based on consideration of hierarchical and constraint relationships, among the decision variables, which represent correlations between a number of decision-making factors. The complicated relationship between these design factors is graphically displayed and hierarchical genetic algorithms, whose genes incorporate the hierarchical structure of the design variables, are employed in the search for an optimal design solution. The proposed method can be effectively applied to the design of products that consider reuse and recycling factors, as it clarifies an optimal life cycle strategy.
