Value-Oriented Decision Support for Design to Life Cycle

Value-Oriented Decision Support for Design to Life Cycle

The design of industrial products considering their entire life cycle must satisfy technical and ecological requirements while providing maximum economic benefit. During the early stages of design and development decisions about the product functions and product characteristics are required which fulfil the given requirements. Beyond these requirements the wants and needs of the customers are the basic input for the product development. Therefore, a product has to meet the value expectation of the customer in order to be successful. The approach of value-oriented decision support for design to life cycle discussed in this paper acts in the triangle of conflicting priorities between technical, ecological and economic requirements. It describes an integrated methodology of value-oriented decision support for the product design processes and helps considering the above-mentioned requirements in terms of their long-term impacts on the entire product life-cycle. In order to achieve an efficient and effective design to life cycle the methods of Quality Function Deployment and Value Analysis are aligned with the methods of Life Cycle Costing and Life Cycle Assessment to be integrated into a comprehensive approach. This paper describes the theoretical background and explains the practical implementation based on a case study. The results of the practical analysis conducted illustrate the optimization potential to be realised when implementing the approach in comparison to traditional design solutions.