Technological information infrastructure for product lifecycle engineering

Abstract For sustainable development, it is requisite not only to assess multi-dimensional items such as environmental impacts, process safety, product safety, and so on, required from human society, environment, and markets, but also to feedback assessment results to product and process design/development. Through the investigation about requirements for manufactures at each stage in product lifecycle, it becomes clear that PDCA (plan—do—check—action) cycle is necessary to take actions properly from viewpoints of ecosystems, business systems, and society. We clarify required functions of supporting system of PDCA cycle, and then propose material supply chain models of hierarchy structure composed of unit process models. Based on proposed system and models, evaluations of PET bottle recycle system and greenhouse sheet recycle system are implemented as trials. Furthermore, we show the directions of future scope.