Enhanced product functionality with life cycle units
G Seliger*, A Buchholz and U Kross
Department of Assembly Technology and Factory Management, Institute for Machine Tools and Factory
Management (IWF), Technical University Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Abstract: Cycle economy is not only ecologically reasonable but also a chance for new business. Selling
utilization instead of selling products is advantageous once additional costs for information processing
and logistics are less than costs for underutilized capacity. A competitive provider o ers product
functionality in quality, time and location as required by the user. Lifetime component monitoring
is conditional for this performance. Modern microelectronic technology enables the acquisition of
component deterioration with sensorial devices, information processing and storing with
microcontrollers and initiating appropriate actions such as maintenance. The architecture of a
microsystem called the life cycle unit (LCU) for product and component monitoring is introduced
and speci®ed. Product examples illustrate some application areas.
Keywords: life cycle unit, diagnosis, product assessment, disassembly, reuse, adaptation, train bogie
1 INTRODUCTION
The current management practices and the standard of
living cause an increase in resource consumption. The
demand for production, utilization and disposal
increases owing to population growth and growing
product requirements. Ecological limits will be exceeded
and the available resources will be exploited in the
medium term [1]. Meeting the increasing demands can
only be made ecologically compatible if energy and
resource consumption per head is reduced drastically
[2]. The objective is to achieve more utilization with
fewer resources by product reuse. Hence it follows that
the utilization productivity of resources has to increase.
This increase can be reached by a sustainable cycle
economy considering ecological as well as economical
chances [3]. Cycle economy is not only ecologically
reasonable but also a chance for new business areas
such as sale of product utilization or adaptation [4]. To
implement this kind of sustainable cycle economy,
products must be designed considering their whole life
cycle, starting from the development along their utiliza-
tion up to their reuse or disposal [5].
2 SELLING UTILIZATION INSTEAD OF
SELLING PRODUCTS
When selling products, an essential element of pro®t is the
decline of marginal unit costs on account of large lot sizes.
The resulting resource consumption is not of too much
concern. All costs of purchase, operation, maintenance
and disposal of the product are at the expense of the
product buyer. If the product is not in use, the product
buyer as owner has to bear the idle capacity costs.
Furthermore, selling replacement products is a big
business, and the manufacturer has a limited interest in
a long product life. However, a disadvantage of selling
products compared with selling their utilization is the
tendency towards higher resource consumption costs
and higher costs of underutilization.
The utilization buyer pays only for the utilization of
the product and not for the product itself. The costs of
investment, operation, maintenance and disposal are
cared for by the utilization seller. The old-style product
manufacturer and seller develops into a utilization
seller and service provider of components and products,
while the utilization seller is interested in a long-lasting
and robust product that causes little costs throughout
its usage. Such a product decreases resource consump-
tion compared with a product under the selling products
paradigm.
Utilization sellers as service providers are able to o er
better integrated application and service performance
with their knowledge about user habits, and a custom-
tailored usage package can be o ered to utilization
1197
B20202 #IMechE 2003 Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs Vol. 217 Part B: J. Engineering Manufacture
The MS was received on 20 December 2002 and was accepted after
revision for publication on 14 May 2003.
*Corresponding author: Department of Assembly Technology and
Factory Management, Institute for Machine Tools and Factory Manage-
ment (IWF), Technical University Berlin, Pascalstrasse 8±9, D-10587
Berlin, Germany.
buyers [6]. Leasing, rent and service contracts, system-
accompanying quality management and information
and communication systems guarantee product pursuit
and product access by the supplier at the end of a
usage phase. A balanced strategy of preventive mainte-
nance and repair preserves or even increases the residual
value of products [7].
Utilization sellers gain satis®ed and bound customers
by addressing them with a comprehensive application
and service performance, although utilization buyers will
hardly develop an emotional closeness to a bought
usage. To be able to o er the product utilization over
several usage phases, the utilization seller needs to adapt
the product according to changing technical necessities
and user needs in di erent usage phases. An appropriate
adaptation is necessary for transferring the product to a
further usage phase and by this enabling a continuous
utilization with the same resources. Types of adaptation
are maintenance, repair, remanufacturing, upgrading,
downgrading, enlargement, reduction, rearrangement
and modernization. The adaptation process requires
disassembly and reassembly. Additional processes may
include cleaning, treatment, component supply/removal,
inspection and sorting.
Selling utilization becomes competitive with selling
products once the idle capacity costs of a sold product
are higher than the costs for logistics, information man-
agement and adaptation (Fig. 1) [8]. Thus, the right com-
ponent is made available in time at the right place in
adequate quality for su cient usage. The utilization pro-
vision, the coordination of di erent services and users,
the distribution and redistribution of products and espe-
cially the adaptation itself has to be organized to enable a
high utilization of the products. It is important that
selling utilization can only be competitive with product
ownership when it delivers a level of customer satisfac-
tion similar or better to that of product ownership.
The business area of selling utilization generates new
requirements on the products. The service provider
needs to know the product status, which may consist of
product position, user identi®cation, degree of utilization
and remaining lifetime. To adapt a product in a simple
and cheap manner, information like the devaluation
degree of components or a disassembly plan has to be
provided at the right time and place. The gathered
information may be delivered to the service provider
using wireless information technology. The presented
functions can be provided by an integrated technical
system, which encompasses the acquisition, processing,
storage and transmission of information as well as
acting on the basis of this information. Such a system
is developed under the term life cycle unit (LCU).
3 LIFE CYCLE UNIT
Devaluation limits the usage time and quality of products
and can be divided into physical changes and changed
requirements. Utilization leads to physical changes such
as ageing, breakage, corrosion, creep, deformation,
fatigue, loss/displacement, pollution and wear, which are
caused by biological, chemical, electrical, magnetic,
mechanical, radiation or thermal mechanisms [9]. Their
extent is determined by product characteristics such as
material or treatment and external in¯uences such as
temperature or dust, and by the type of usage. Changed
requirements can result from technical progress, legal
amendments, a change in values, fashion trends or a
converted usage and are attributed to parameters such
as purpose, duration, place or intensity of usage, policy,
society and economy. Knowledge about physical changes,
components, paths of adaptation and other product
features is required for the disassembly of devaluated
products and to reassemble and distribute adapted
products for later usage phases. The microsystem technol-
ogy o ers new potentials for acquiring the product status
of components by sensors, for data processing, storage
and transfer by microelectronics and for compensating
Fig. 1 Premise for selling utilization instead of selling products
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Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs Vol. 217 Part B: J. Engineering Manufacture B20202 #IMechE 2003
physical changes and initiating disassembly by actuators
[10].
The LCU system consists of four elements: sensor,
marking, life cycle board (LCB) and actuator, as can be
seen in Fig. 2. Sensors, or transducers, are integrated in
components, acquire the product status and monitor
safety-relevant joining elements. Information may be
displayed in a coded way with the help of markings in
order to ease their sensorial acquisition and decoding.
The LCB is able to process, store and transfer information
with its three elements: processor, memory and interface.
Actuators may act against the e ects of physical changes
and are controlled by the LCB. A second task of actuators
is the intelligent disassembly by using joining elements
with integrated actuators. To disassemble the joint, an
electromagnet has to be positioned close to the head.
After activating the electromagnet, the joint may be
released.
The LCB is currently being developed in SMD
Technology using a Motorola Cold®re MC5272 micro-
controller. It runs the operating system uCLinux, an
embedded version of Linux, which enables various
ways of communication such as Bluetooth, Ethernet,
IrDA, GSM or WLAN. For many applications, the
basic LCB has to be equipped with appropriate sensors
and actuators. In order to obtain dynamic data such as
information about the actual status of the application,
it is necessary to establish a model of the devaluation
process, to classify the occurring physical changes and
to select sensors that detect the relevant changes. The
devaluation model will be incorporated into the LCU
software. If only static product data such as product
identi®cation or disassembly information have to be
stored, the LCU may deliver it without the need for
reliability models. To supply static product data at
minimal costs, markings can be a cheap alternative to
an LCB. They are passive information memories and
do not require any energy supply to provide information.
Examples are paint markings or barcodes, and systems
for coding, identifying and decoding of disassembly
information stored with markings have been developed.
Finally, the whole LCU can be produced as a modular
microsystem, where all components are integrated in one
small system. In this way, the advantages of microsystem
technology such as decline of marginal unit costs, higher
reliability due to smaller structures, lower energy con-
sumption or accessibility to areas that are not accessible
for usual technologies will show through.
For identifying useful LCU functionalities, it is helpful
to show product application characteristics and informa-
tion processed by the LCU. Figure 3 gives a ®rst glance
of the combinatorial solution space.
The above information is important for multiple
interest groups: manufacturers of consumer and capital
goods would like to determine the product status,
Fig. 2 Four elements of the LCU
Fig. 3 Solution space for LCU functionality design
ENHANCED PRODUCT FUNCTIONALITY WITH LIFE CYCLE UNITS 1199
B20202 #IMechE 2003 Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs Vol. 217 Part B: J. Engineering Manufacture
causes of failures and warranty injuries [11]. Disassembly
factories and maintenance services are interested in
stored disassembly plans and maintenance information.
The documented user habits could be interesting for
advertising agencies. Public authorities such as an
environmental agency are interested in monitoring
emission standards of non-merit goods. Leasing com-
panies such as a service provider of photocopiers want
to maintain their ¯eet in a preventive way, and a logistics
service would like to know the accurate position and
status of the transported goods at all times.
4 AREAS OF APPLICATION
Two applications being prototypically realized for
evaluation are described in the following ®gures. In the
®rst example, an LCU for the acquisition and evaluation
of product status data of a car is presented in Fig. 4.
Sensors detect the pressure on the crankcase, the ignition
currents, the angular speed of the motor, the oil velocity,
oil pressure and oil temperature, the water temperature
and the combustion strength. The position of the car
is detected via the global positioning system (GPS)
and transferred to the service provider using radio
transmission.
In the course of deregulation of German freight rail-
way operation, the competition leads to the increased
ful®lment of end-customer needs for transport use.
These are mainly less transport cost, information on
freight location and condition, freight security, higher
average speed and accuracy. With the telematics-based
LCU wagon, owners could ful®l these needs by higher
availability, safety and more e ective maintenance,
GPS-receiver and sensor technology in loading space,
antitheft devices, decreased time for train coupling and
reliability.
The acquisition of the parameters enables a prediction
of the devaluation in the car and possible means for its
improvement. The car utilization provider can inform
the user about a scheduled maintenance and supply a
replacement car in time. Through its documentation
possibilities, the utilization provider obtains information
about the user’s habits and knows where the car is
located which is useful in case of accidents or theft.
The quality assurance of products is another aspect
and with LCUs can be extended from design/production
phase into the usage phase/post-usage phase. Today,
quality assurance instruments are only applied during
the usage phase of products in the form of ®eld data
and loss analyses evaluation. Enhanced quality assur-
ance instruments delivering information from the pro-
duct usage phase relevant for designs of new products,
etc., can be realized using LCUs. This becomes more
and more interesting in markets with decreased develop-
ment times (e.g. mobile phones).
In the second example, an LCU is implemented in a
freight wagon bogie [12]. The main wear componentsÐ
axle bearing, wheel, brake and spring (see Fig. 5) a ect
the maintenance activities. Measuring the stress values
Fig. 4 Acquired and transferred data of the car LCU
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Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs Vol. 217 Part B: J. Engineering Manufacture B20202 #IMechE 2003
in relation to the real operation performance is used to
estimate the condition of the components by calculating
continuously their wear life span equations. When
reaching de®ned thresholds, the LCU transfers infor-
mation using GSM to a central o ce that plans and
coordinates the maintenance activities with temporal
advance. In addition to that, the safety-relevant bearings
of the bogie are supervised regarding temperature and
acceleration in order to prevent derailment resulting
from stuck or broken bearings. The exceeding of
threshold values leads to emergency actions, for instance
the reduction of train velocity. When coupling the
wagons to trains, the LCUs of all train bogies report
the operativeness of the brakes to the locomotive using
a separate bus. The time consuming manual control of
each brake that is done by wagon inspectors today can
be omitted.
5 CONCLUSIONS
An increasing utilization productivity of resources is a
fundamental ecological requirement of mankind con-
tinuously improving the standard of living. Multiple
usage phases of useful products and components can
contribute to more prosperity with less resource con-
sumption. Sale of utilization becomes economically
competitive with product sale once innovative services
empowered by the potentials of modern information
and communication technology enable the saving of
idle capacity costs. Technologically, the challenge of
component adaptation to customer requirements related
to time, place and quality is met by the modular design of
the life cycle unit (LCU) microsystem combined with
respective logistics. The pro®t paradigm of a maximum
number of products sold to minimum costs of manu-
facturing is provoked by that of maximum utilization
and functionality sold to minimum costs of resource
consumption.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This paper presents results of the Collaborative Research
Center 281 `Disassembly Factories for the Recovery of
Resources in Product and Material Cycles’ (SFB 281),
®nancially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsge-
meinschaft (DFG).
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