Abstract
It is necessary to achieve an effective product lifecycle management to shift from a society with mass production and mass consumption that brings environmental problems and an exhaustion of resources, to a sustainable recycling society. A difficulty for manufacturers to realize a reuse-based production is that they cannot predict how many reusable parts with what quality are taken back from consumers. To solve this problem, a system supporting the collection of deterioration information of products in use at consumers is proposed using network agents in order to facilitate the communication between manufacturers and consumers, which enables the manufacturers to create an effective manufacturing plan of products.
