Low life cycle costs and higher flexibility (two shares of the way to sustainable design) of production systems become more and more important, especially during the ramp up of a new product. There are different ways to support the development of sustainable design of machines and production systems. Each phase of the product life cycle (e.g. manufacturing, usage, recycling) has its own requirements to the product development. A basic demand of companies is to save money during life span of the machine use. This is also one of the best requirements for developing upgradeable machines: Parallel to the gradual ramp up of a new product the new production system has to be able to be extended gradually as well: implement additional functions for more flexibility, new software, get higher speed etc. Therefore the exchange of information between machine designer and production engineer about the product, the manufacturing technology and life cycle has to be extended in a very special way.     «

Low life cycle costs and higher flexibility (two shares of the way to sustainable design) of production systems become more and more important, especially during the ramp up of a new product. There are different ways to support the development of sustainable design of machines and production systems. Each phase of the product life cycle (e.g. manufacturing, usage, recycling) has its own requirements to the product development. A basic demand of companies is to save money during life span of the...     »