A Methodology for Holistic Lifecycle Approach as Decision Support System for Closed-loop Lifecycle Management

viii decisions towards sustainability. Closed loop Lifecycle Management contains four main components, PEIDs’ for collecting data, middle ware to combine different applications and collect and distribute life cycle data, a decision support system (DSS) to transform the collected data into usable information and a product knowledge and management sys tem (PDKM) to manage the information and knowledge generated through the life cycle of the product. In automotive industry PLM systems are used to manage the life cycle data but these systems are somehow separate from each other. It is needed to develop a middleware to combine the separate PLM systems, a DSS to transform gathered data into necessary information and knowledge for specific applications and a PDKM to manage the information and knowledge. Holistic life cycle approach takes into account the whole life cycle of the product and generates performance characteristics, which might be configured in order to evaluate the sustainability performance of the product. A Closed Loop Lifecycle Management system containing a DSS configured with the holistic life cycle approach will be an efficient tool to evaluate and improve the sustainability performance of products. The proposed methodology benefits from the comprehensiveness of the life cycle thinking and integrates the tools for evaluation of all aspects of sustainability. It has been applied to three test cases and validated. The first two test cases belong to EC FP7 SuPLight project, where the effect of using recycled material on high end automotive and aeronautics components made of wrought aluminum alloys was investigated. Through the life cycle of the automotive components, the BOL phase is prevailing in which using recycled material reduces the environmental impact of the components drastically. On the other hand, MOL phase is the dominant phase for aeronautics components. Reducing the weight of the component could be more effective than using recycled material. The third test case belongs to Eco Innovera SuWAS project, in which recycling and incineration of waste ink from flexographic printing are compared. The environmental impact of both scenarios are comparable where recycling offers economic benefits and job creation through innovation. Finally, the results of this work have been published in conferences and journal papers. Holistic lifecycle approach, life cycle thinking, sustainability assessment, closed loop lifecycle management, decision support system, life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, social life cycle assessment.