The lifecycle of active and intelligent products: The augmentation concept

This paper aims to demonstrate the consistency of extending the active or intelligent product concept to the whole product lifecycle. The first two sections describe the state of the art in the field of closed-loop PLM and the repercussions of introducing active products in the different phases of the product lifecycle: design, manufacturing, distribution, use and recycling. A functional generic model is then introduced. This model is based upon the 'augmentation' concept, which is available throughout the whole product lifecycle. To illustrate our proposal, we provide examples in the design and distribution phases. To validate our proposal, we focus on the manufacturing phase, describing a real implementation on a flexible assembly cell at Valenciennes AIP Primeca pole. Our ongoing research works to apply the 'augmentation' concept to the operating phase of a complex system in order to improve performance, especially in terms of availability. Keywords: active productintelligent productaugmentation systemdynamic routingflexible manufacturing system Acknowledgements This research was supported financially by the International Campus on Safety and Intermodality in Transportation, the Nord/Pas-de-Calais Region, the European Community, the Regional Delegation for Research and Technology, the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, and the National Center for Scientific Research. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of these institutions. Additional informationNotes on contributorsDamien Trentesaux Note: This paper has been selected from Industrial Engineering Congress CIGI 2009.