product life cycle, dismissal included. PLM originates from PDM, product data manage- ment, with two-fold upgrading: to improve the business native effectiveness; and to widen the reach of the involved authorised actors. Key aspects are (Stark, 2005):
• Product.and.service unified data-frame: The delivery of extended artefacts is the primary business achievement, and life-cycle knowledge is a basic requirement, since the earlier design steps.
• Integrated data-flow management: Hierarchical, interconnected, parametric product and business models ensure that decisions are made, achieving entrepreneurship-wide impact.
• Distributed,.flexible operability: Robust communication and shared database and processing resources help in establishing teaming relationships, to face every emerg- ing request.
• Plug-and-play. interoperability: All technical and business modules need to be seamlessly compatible and self-adapting, to become operational immediately, without integration cost.
• Total.connectedness: All stakeholders exploit communication infrastructures that deliver the right data at the right time, whenever they are required.
• Fully-enabled.extended.artefact.transparency: PLM tools, by science-based and experience-driven knowledge, grants visibility to the decision schemes and achieved performance.
For the enterprise profitability, dependence on the strategic positioning in the market is current admission, and the supply chain concept shall also modify into value chain, to join parts and materials delivery, with the related intangibles flow (value Web), supporting a main contractor with vital complements. Today, the recourse to off-process design tasks and linked databases is compelled by the enacted product life-cycle regulation constraints, and is made possible by existing ICT aids, once the PLM expands to cover three ranges:
• Standard.product.data:.physical specs; operation performance, quality, affordability, and cost; producibility; life-cycle constraints; use and maintenance; and dismissal instructions
• Standard.manufacturing.data: materials procurement and processing, assembly, and disassembly; packaging and delivering; and re-manufacturing
• Standard.enterprise.data: which includes business functions: trade strategies, fi- nance and resource, and so forth; and, operation functions: factory and facilities specs, scheduling and planning, and the likes
A relevant issue in PLM deployment is to link the views, developed for different purposes or by different teams, in order to achieve model federation, making it easy to create high-level representations, allowing reuse of existing data and frames, and propagating the knowledge environments by seamless continuity. Designers will be able to assess candidate prototypal
deliveries, from virtual factories, for virtual point-of-use setups, up to virtual point-of-dis- missal situations, to evaluate and to improve producibility, function performance, operation reliability, maintainability, eco-impacts, dismissal falls-off, and so forth, in actual running conditions. They will be able to perform these checks beforehand, with proper complete- ness, to quickly reach effective hints, with the ability to zoom-in at the critical details and to compare alternatives. The life-cycle super model, then, distinguishes because of (Michelini
& Kovacs, 1999; Michelini & Razzoli, 2005):
• Varying-geometry boundaries, to expand the views to extended artefacts
• Embedded simulation-emulation tools, to allow virtual behavioural checks
• Cooperative infrastructure, to support multiple-domain problem-solving issues
• Automatic propagation of changes, with updating of the super-model data-frame
• Evaluation of alternatives, trends, risks, and so forth, based on reliable relational schemes
• Rapid producibility, affordability, and so forth analyses, through intelligent decision support
• Fast and accurate exploration of life-cycle occurrences, for concept-to-production figures
• Archival of globally-accessible knowledge-bases, available in the current activity
• Ubiquitous service through the extended enterprise, enabling inter-operable tools
• Any similar options of advanced PLM, that today and future ICT tools provide The unifying super-model for the coherent arrangement of the condition knowledge, needed to deal with extended artefacts, is considered by several research and development initia- tives all over the world, with different levels of complexity. The IMTR Inc., (IMTR, 2000), for example, is a noteworthy example, with effective work aimed at joining the modelling and simulation functions, separately used for the description of products, processes, and enterprises, into an unified frame; the project shows the effective achievements at the range of product-process integration (by simultaneous engineering) and prospects a list of manufac- turing functions deserving specific attention to reach appropriate enterprise integration.
The joint product-process design is an accepted practice, and has contributed to apply economy of scope by simultaneous engineering techniques. The eco-consistent PLM tools distinguish by a few additions, such as re-manufacturing options, such as processes that support return and reprocessing of products upon completion of original intended use, to take profit from reverse logistics. Actually, design-for-manufacturing (DfM), design-for-assembly (DfA), and so forth, scopes expand over design-for-disassembly (DfD), and design-for-recycling (DfR) ones, since the earlier product ideation steps. The business paradigms include remanufacture, recycle and reuse of products, parts, and materials, to minimise tangibles consumption and to maximise the use of resources. The eco-PLM tools enable designers to analyse reverse logistics as a means to enhance the value chain, for effectiveness, profitability, and envi- ronment sensitivity. This is, however, only an intermediate step toward new rules, when suppliers’ responsibility encompasses the product and service delivery, on the life-cycle span, dismissal included. For sustainability, governmental acts will require visibility on the
supply chain, to refrain from polluting and to lower consumption. Then competitiveness will turn from the capability of offering new products (fit-for-purpose to individual needs) to the ability of providing services, granting functions to full satisfaction, and better tangibles effectiveness (fit-for-purpose to general benefits). These emerging businesses will profit from the cooperative organisation by alternative approaches:
• The manufacturers could be spurred to keep in charge all services: artefacts supply, life-cycle conformance, and dismissal incumbents.
• New independent enterprises could profit by safety rules and environment acts expansion, to become service dealers, with technology-oriented qualification and infrastructure-based organisations.
Both approaches, nevertheless, require to focus on the PLM, moving enterprise profitability to be critically dependent on the design choices. The new market leaders will move within this technical-scientific framework, replacing the economy of scale, by the economy of scope, with, in any case, two opportunities:
1. Functions. delivery: with profitability in the business of supplying products and services.
2. Recovering efficiency: with profitability in reverse logistics (from waste, to “raw”
materials)