Abstract
A product changes through its life cycle. Product components change their states (e.g., degradation of performance caused by attrition and corrosion during their operation, and change of geometry by processing and shredding) and change their relationship such as disassembly in maintenance process. In addition, a product involves various stakeholders through its life cycle. The stakeholders recognize a product from different viewpoints because they have their own needs to the product (e.g., for manufactures, a product is to be assembled and sold to customers, and for recyclers, a product is to be dismantled and sold as recycled materials). In order to improve the performance on environmental and economical aspects throughout the entire product life cycle, designers need to design both a product and its life cycle by focusing on these changes of a product. For the development of a support system for such a design, this paper proposes a representational scheme for a product changing through its life cycle. A case study indicates that our method successfully represents changes of a product and allows designers to design a product and its life cycle by considering these changes.
