A concurrent engineering approach to total product life cycle management

Survival in today's global marketplace belongs to manufacturing organizations that understand, and can adapt, new approaches and strategies which allow them to be more competitive. Within the last ten years, manufacturing industries learned the importance, both to the bottom line and the effect on the environment, of managing the total life cycle of their products. Unfortunately, too many companies are reactive, as opposed to proactive, in their approach to lifts cycle management. They try to solve problems as they occur, i.e., environmental and safety issues, obsolete inventories, disposal issues, etc.. Many of these issues, if addressed early in the product's design phase, could be turned into a competitive weapon instead of a business problem and liability. Remanufacturing, if embraced as a business strategy in a product's life cycle design, can be the difference between success and failure of many products in a global marketplace. This paper discusses how a Concurrent Engineering Team (CET) may manage a product's total life cycle using a Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) approach.