Abstract
Stimulated by the global environmental issues, needs for a new manufacturing paradigm are increasing. Such a new manufacturing paradigm should drastically reduce materials and energy consumptions, while maintaining quality of life, product quality, and corporate profits. To investigate the feasibility of such a manufacturing paradigm, life cycle design is an indispensable tool. On the other hand, upgradable artifacts, which can upgrade their functionality during operation and the remanufacturing stage, is an important type of artifacts for realizing inverse manufacturing, because they have longer life times, encourage reuse of components, and moreover, create new business chances at lower stages of product life cycles. In this paper, we clarify a decision making problem in upgradable artifacts design and propose an idea to suport such decision making by using "life cycle simulation (LCS) systems" that are currently developed by various researchers.
