Abstract
A significant reduction of environmental load of a product without sacrificing its functionality and performance is severely required. For achieving it, design of life cycle of a product as well as its product design is indispensable. This study illustrates a life cycle design of a modular type personal computer and evaluates its environmental load and business feasibility by using life cycle simulation. Users are classified into three groups: performance sensitive users, cost sensitive users, and average users. Total environmental load, total cost of users, and total profit of manufacturer with three different user groups are calculated considering technological advancement. Result of this simulation reveals that the environmental and economic superiority of a modular type personal computer depends on temporal distribution of products′ shipment.
