Business Models -- Feasibility and scope of life cycle approaches to sustainable consumption -- A business-oriented approach to the product life cycle -- Meeting the Climate Change Challenge -- Assessing product life cycle strategies in the Japanese market -- Applications of service engineering methods and tool to industries -- End-of-Life Strategies -- Towards self-disassembling products Design solutions for economically feasible large-scale disassembly -- Indicators to measure sustainability of an industrial manufacturing -- Concepts and definitions for product recovery Analysis and clarification of the terminology used in academia and industry -- Remanufacturing of flat screen monitors -- Improving product recovery decisions through product information -- Photocopier remanufacturing at Xerox UK A description of the process and consideration of future policy issues -- Dynamic process and operation planning for hybrid disassembly -- Clean technologies for recycling A case study on automotive batteries in Brazil -- Identifying availability contribution of lifecycle-adapted services -- Product Development for Sustainability -- Designing products that are never discarded -- Guidelines in ecodesign: a case study from railway industry -- Identifying and assessing environmentally benign modules -- Strategies and material flow in ecodesign -- Screening life cycle modelling for sustainable product design -- Using design for environment for redesigning a household appliance -- Modular design of technical product-service systems -- Estimating the environmental profile of early design concepts -- Product Life Cycle Management -- Design for environment by target life cycle costing -- PLM to support hazard identification in chemical plant design -- Smart machining systems: issues and research trends -- Development of methods to support the implementation of a PDMS -- The role of knowledge management in product lifecycle -- A product-process-organisation integrative model for collaborative design -- Dynamic life cycle performance simulation of production systems -- LC universal model for the enterprise information system structure.

The focus of this book is the consideration of environmental issues in engineering process and product design. It presents a selection of 30 papers ensuing from the 12th CIRP International seminar on Life Cycle Engineering, held at the university of Grenoble, France, in April 2005. Sustainable development is more and more at the core of government and industry policy. Industrial production and consumption culture are facing dramatic changes due to pollution and waste problems, exhaustion of available non-renewable resources and rapid growth in world population. So, the environmental focus has shifted from production processes to the product's entire life cycle. The potential of technology to create synergies between environmental protection and economic growth has been recognized. Life cycle engineering aims at providing engineering tools targeted towards cleaner product-oriented activities for improving the environment while contributing to competitiveness and growth. This book is of interest to academics, students and practitioners, specializing in environmental issues in mechanical engineering, design and manufacturing. This volume is recommended as a reference textbook for all researchers in the field. It will give teaching staff confronted with training methodologies in integrated design and environment a tool to assess the scope of the development prospects in an extremely wide ranging field.