CIRP seminar on life cycle engineering Copenhagen, Denmark May 2003

Engineering for sustainable development - an obligatory skill of the future engineer

Life Cycle Design and Management based on Simulation of Service Quality Variation
Fumihiko Kimura(1) and Tomoyuki Hata Department of Precision Machinery Engineering The University of Tokyo Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan e-mail kimura@cim.pe.u-tokyo.ac.jp

ABSTRACT

For achieving proper environmental performance, it is fundamentally important to realize appropriate life cycle design of targeted product systems as a whole, and to perform consistent life cycle management during the usage of products. A method for life cycle design and management planning is proposed, which is based on comprehensive life cycle simulation based on product usage and deterioration modeling. There are many options for conceptual design of life cycle and management, such as long-life-heavy-maintenance, short-life-no-maintenance, rapid-take-backreuse, etc. Product design and operation, and associated maintenance methods and facilities could be very much different under various different environmental circumstances. Appropriate life cycle design and management should be selected and optimized in terms of life cycle performance and environmental conditions. Prediction and evaluation of product or service quality variations during product usage due to deterioration and other usage conditions are the most critical factors for deciding appropriate life cycle. Practical modeling of products and associated life cycle, including maintenance facilities, are investigated. Based on those models, a simulation system is developed for product service quality variations for comparatively evaluating conceptual life cycle design options. Application examples are shown for elevator maintenance design. Keywords: Life cycle design, Life cycle management, Service quality, Maintenance.

1. Introduction Today it is strongly required to realize environmentally conscious products, and to implement associated life cycle management in all kinds of industry. Requirements for environmental consciousness are multi-fold, such as pollution reduction, energy and other resource saving, reduction of waste, etc. At the same time, product/product system suppliers are demanded to satisfy customers requirements in various manner, such as higher product service quality, cheaper price and loner life products, etc. Often environmentally consciousness and customer satisfaction may contradict to each other. Therefore one of the keen issues for the next generation manufacturing is how to manage the good balance between environmental consciousness and customer satisfaction, and this is the main issue for Life Cycle Engineering1. In this paper life cycle design and management is considered as a mean for solving the above issue. The aim is to achieve relevant product service quality, not only by product functionality only, but also by fair management of total product life cycle, focusing on product usage phases. Here we consider the product service quality as a level of services, for product customers, which can be supplied by product basic functionality and associated maintenance activities. In this case, maintenance means all sorts of activities for effectively operating the target products. Consumers good are normally carefully designed to perform properly without any maintenance in users hands for many years. However many consumers goods are, if not malfunctioning, operating in very bad
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CIRP seminar on life cycle engineering Copenhagen, Denmark May 2003

Engineering for sustainable development - an obligatory skill of the future engineer

conditions, and supply deteriorated product services and bad environmental effects. This means bad product service quality. For achieving good balance of environmental effects and product services, it is effective to allocate appropriate effort for products themselves and associated operating support, that is, life cycle management. Life cycle design and management are briefly explained in the next section for clarifying the above issues. In section 3, life cycle simulation is introduced as a powerful tool for supporting life cycle design and management. Maintenance planning is discussed in section 4 for supporting product service quality management. In section 5, a case study is discussed for elevator maintenance planning to show the effectiveness of life cycle simulation for optimal design of life cycle management under product service quality variations. 2. Life Cycle Design and Management For achieving better life cycle performance, total product life cycle must be explicitly designed and managed. In this section, issues and general approaches are briefly discussed. (1) Often encountered problems in product life cycle: There are lots of possible inefficiencies in product life cycle, which are not normally considered during the product design phase. Some of them are: - Unexpected early disposal of products due to functional obsoleteness or simply new product emergence, - Non-use or idle products in users hand, - Long-term use of old and inefficient products, - Life cycle management overhead, particularly maintenance and/or take-back cycle, Pre-planned total life cycle and associated management scheme are essentially important for avoiding such inefficiencies. (2) Product life cycle design procedure2: For coping with the above issues, the following life cycle design procedure has been proposed: a. Conceptual design of product life cycle, b. Selection of life cycle scenarios, c. Product design adapted to the selected life cycle scenario, d. Design of a management system for total product life cycle, There can be many different kinds of product life cycles for products of the same functionality according to the difference of product usage and environmental conditions. A single use camera and a long-life high quality camera are the good example. We call such different realization of product life cycles as product life cycle scenarios. At the step a. of the above procedure, possible life cycle scenarios should be exhaustively enumerated according to usage modes of customers. Then life cycle simulation is performed for comparatively evaluating enumerated lifecycle scenarios at the step b. Based on multi-folded evaluation criteria, some feasible life cycle scenario is selected for further elaboration. Detailed product design adapted to the selected life cycle scenario is performed at the step c. Various product design technologies, such as modularity and standardization, shall be employed to meet the requirements from the life cycle scenario. Finally to avoid the excessive overhead of life cycle management operations, design of a management system is carried out for the total product life cycle at the step d. Maintenance planning and management play a central role at this step. The above four steps are repeatedly performed to iteratively approach to the optimal solution. The generate and test principle is a general guideline for this procedure. Consideration at the standpoint of users is essential for such enumeration of various possibilities.

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CIRP seminar on life cycle engineering Copenhagen, Denmark May 2003

Engineering for sustainable development - an obligatory skill of the future engineer

(3) Product usage mode: As seen in the previous section, it is important to note, during the life cycle design, how users behave to the target product. We call it as a product usage mode how users receive product services. There are many characteristics to define product usage modes: - Long-term use or short-term use, - Heavy use or light use, - Function-oriented or cost-oriented, - Function-focused or other factors, such as aesthetics, - Initial investment or operational cost. According to the target market characteristics, product strategy and life cycle design could be different. Product usage modes of majority of the customers determine the market characteristics. It is a very interesting subject to see the regional and temporal differences of such product usage modes. (4) Product life cycle scenario: In order to satisfy customers requirements or required product usage modes, appropriate life cycle scenarios must be designed. Variations of product life cycle may happen according to the following factors: - A simple closed loop life cycle for a single product or a complicated network-shaped life cycle for a group of products, - Speed and volume of product flow in product life cycle, - Re-use, recycle or disposal, - With or without functional upgrade, - Difference of ownership, such as purchase, lease or rental, It is a core part of the life cycle design procedure how to generate feasible life cycle scenarios by varying above factors. (5) Maintenance planning: It is particularly important how to control flow of products along the product life cycle. As discussed in (1), many inefficiencies of product life cycle in the users side may occur due to the improper flow of products in life cycle. Maintenance is an only mean to actively control the flow of products in users hands. In this sense, maintenance can be considered as a service providing mechanism. There could be many options for maintenance control: - Maintenance criteria: service quality or cost, - Maintenance agent: manufacturer, user or service provider, - Maintenance object: products, parts, or function(service). Maintenance activity can be optimized by various parameters: Time-based or condition-based, Maintenance period: short vs. long, Inspection and/or repair, Amount and cost for maintenance logistics and facility, For planning of maintenance operation, sensitivity analysis of the above parameters to maintenance performance is very important. Life cycle simulation is used for evaluation. Some examples are shown in the following case study. 3. Life Cycle Simulation Life cycle design is a complicated procedure, and normally it is not possible to get optimized design solution directly. Therefore simulation is a powerful practical tool3. There are many
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CIRP seminar on life cycle engineering Copenhagen, Denmark May 2003

Engineering for sustainable development - an obligatory skill of the future engineer

parameters affecting the total product life cycle performance. Sensitivity analysis of parameters for life cycle performance is very effective for achieving practical robust design solution. Different from the static life cycle assessment, life cycle simulation can evaluate the influence of timedependent variations, such as production volume variations or different mix of products. General flow of life cycle simulation is shown in Fig.1. Product flow throughout the total product life cycle is simulated under assumed condition of market, users, production and other environmental factors. Simulation algorithm is event-driven. Time step and duration for computation is selected according to characteristics of products.
Check Product Quality Suffice? N N Take-back Recover? Y Maintenance Y

Quality

Used Product Quality

Required Quality

Disassembly Processing for Reuse Processing for Recycle

Acceptable Quality Time

Production Delivery Installation Update Use History of Product

Fig.2 Quality Model.

Fig.1 Life Cycle smulation.

As a core part of life cycle simulation, product quality check plays an important role. A quality model, as shown in Fig.2, is used for this decision. In a quality model, we set three quality measures: required product quality, acceptable product quality and used product quality. Required product quality means quality that users normally require based on the available products at the market. For technologically mature products, this quality remains the same over time. For innovative products, this quality goes up rapidly as time goes. Acceptable quality has the same trend as the required quality, but is lower than the required quality by certain acceptable limit. Even when the used product quality is lower than the required quality, users normally continue to use the products if the used product quality is above the acceptable quality. As for users who care about product functionality, acceptable quality is very near to required quality. For users who care about cost, probably acceptable quality is rather lower than required quality. Used product quality represents product quality under usage. According to the usage, used product quality goes down due to deterioration. By replacement or maintenance, used product quality goes up. In this case, quality means collectively various quality measures, such as functionality, reliability, performance, etc. Based on this quality model, a decision is made, during simulation, whether users continue to keep using the same products or to replace them with new ones. This decision rule is set up, based on various simulation assumptions, such as users model, market trends and life cycle management policy. A quality model can be constructed based on past product data and physical deterioration

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CIRP seminar on life cycle engineering Copenhagen, Denmark May 2003

Engineering for sustainable development - an obligatory skill of the future engineer

simulation by use of product modelling. For achieving realistic lifecycle simulation, it is a keen issue how to set up a more precise quality model. 4. Maintenance Planning As discussed in the previous section, maintenance plays an important role for realizing stable and robust product service quality. For life cycle design purpose, it is necessary to predict maintenance performance in the early stages of design. In such early stages, detailed product and life cycle models are not yet available, so it is a complicated issue how to establish appropriate models for maintenance planning. In such situation, models are not necessarily, or cannot be, very precise. Therefore the planning and simulation results are not quantitatively exact. But, it is feasible to consider rough macroscopic models, by which sensitivity analysis of various parameters can be qualitatively performed with enough reliability for the purpose of life cycle design and management. Here such macroscopic models are utilized, which are based on a concept of state transition models. As shown in Fig.3. product behaviour and performance are modelled by stochastic or statistical transition among associated states which correspond to various status of products or parts. State transition information is derived from existing product data, or can be computed by a method based on functional modelling and computer aided FMEA4. A method for state transition model generation is to be further developed, and it is crucial to establish a method for verifying model reliability in comparison with practical field data.
Usage Load Effect of State Change

Effect from Environment

State Change

Performance Change

Deformation, Wear, Corrosion, No Influence on Performance Crack, Dust, etc.

Fig.3 State Transition Model for Maintenance Planning. 5. Service Quality Management for Elevator: Case Study For demonstrating the effectiveness of the simulation-based approach, an example of service quality management for an elevator is studied. The aim of this study is to evaluate service quality improvement by various changes of elevator parameters, such as the introduction of a monitoring unit for elevator operation. The whole structure of models for elevator operation is shown in Fig.4. There are four major components in this figure: an elevator model, user models, a model for monitoring units, and maintenance service facility models which include human engineers. The details are not described here, but all models are based on macroscopic state transition models, and not based on exact machine structures. Necessary model data are collected from practical data and also partially estimated based on available data. The major components for simulation here are an elevator door movement mechanism, a door rail, a rope, a winding machine and various controllers. In the following discussion a door mechanism and a door rail are considered.

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CIRP seminar on life cycle engineering Copenhagen, Denmark May 2003

Engineering for sustainable development - an obligatory skill of the future engineer

Corrective Maintenance Order User/Manager Requirement Usage Mode

Monitoring Unit Requirement/ Usage Mode

Input Order Elevator State State Model Observable State Data

State Identification Model

Monitoring Data Elevator State

Service Engineer
Regular Maintenance Scheule

Load Model (Load -> State) Performance Performance Model (State -> Pfrm.) Failure Model (Random) Failure Observable Pfrm. Data

Maintenance Execution Model

State Maintenance Necessity

Preventive Maintenance Order

Observable Failure Data Corrective Maintenance Order

Fig.4 Models for Elevator Maintenance. There are many complicated states for malfunctioning of various components of an elevator. But here we assume only three different levels about malfunctioning: - State deterioration level 0: No recognized deterioration, - State deterioration level 1: Recognizable deterioration, but no influence on performance, - State deterioration level 2: Performance deterioration (Malfunctioning). We assume certain state transition probability which is dependent on elevator usage history. Various combinations of state deterioration levels determine performance deterioration of specified elevator components. For example, door movement deterioration is determined by a complex combination of state deterioration levels, concerning with door shape, a door actuator and a door brake. Various parameter settings are necessary for performing simulation, such as elevator usage time, work hours for service engineers, door fault reasons and various repair processes. Here three different cases of maintenance strategy are simulated: a. Corrective maintenance based on user reports about malfunctioning, b. Time-based regular inspection maintenance, c. Continuous monitoring of operation by monitoring units. Some results of simulation are shown in Fig.5, Fig.6 and Fig.7, respectively. Vertical axis represents deterioration level 0 to 2. Horizontal axis represents simulation time step. In these cases, one week is used as unit simulation time step. Clear differences of operation can be recognized by using different maintenance strategy in Fig.5 to Fig.7. For instance, under continuous monitoring, deterioration level 1 is readily fixed to level 0 by quick dispatch of service engineers, as shown in Fig.7. Summary of simulation results is shown in Table 1. By looking at the results, it is recognized that effect of monitoring is not good as expected. This could be due to bad monitoring performance and dispatch rules of engineers in case of warning. Additional simulation has been
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CIRP seminar on life cycle engineering Copenhagen, Denmark May 2003

Engineering for sustainable development - an obligatory skill of the future engineer

performed for clarifying the effect of monitoring. Some results are shown in Table 2. The results clearly show the high sensitivity of monitoring accuracy and dispatch rules of service engineers on maintenance performance.
2 2

(a) Main Body

(b) Door Fig.5 Corrective Maintenance.

(a) Main Body

(b) Door Fig.6 Time-Based Maintenance.

(a) Main Body

(b) Door Fig.7 Monitoring-Based Maintenance..

CIRP Copenhagen 2003 Secretariat IPL, DTU, building 424, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark Tel.: (+45) 45 25 46 60 - e-mail: cm@ipl.dtu.dk - www.cirpcopenhagen2003.dk

CIRP seminar on life cycle engineering Copenhagen, Denmark May 2003

Engineering for sustainable development - an obligatory skill of the future engineer

Occurrence of Level 2 for Main Body (per ye

Corrective Maintenance Regular Inspection a Regular Inspection b Monitoring A Monitoring B Monitoring C

0.37 0.22 0.15 0.04 0.31 0.06

26.40 28.10 18.90 22.50 26.10 27.70

27.60 33.40 32.90 40.70 28.10 42.70

0.55 0.49 0.48 0.12 0.11 0.08

35.80 34.30 26.70 29.00 26.40 31.30

33.00 39.00 34.00 54.70 52.40 67.70

Table 1 Comparison of Simulation Rsults (1).

Dispatch of Service Engineer (peryear) Occurrence of Main Body Degradation Le
Occurrence of Door Degradation Level 2 (per

Monitoring Accracy
Monitoring A Monitoring A99% Monitoring A98% Monitoting C Monitoring C99% Monitoring C98%

0.04 0.04 0.04 0.06 0.05 0.05

22.50 22.00 17.80 27.70 24.50 24.30

40.70 167.70 251.20 42.70 72.70 91.00

0.12 0.08 0.07 0.08 0.10 0.09

29.00 32.00 26.10 31.30 36.10 32.10

54.70 190.50 268.80 67.70 118.40 129.10

Table 2 Comparison of Simulation Rsults (2). 6. Summary Life cycle design and management are considered based on simulation of total product life cycle. By using life cycle simulation, product quality variation under various usage conditions can be evaluated in terms of product functional deterioration. The key issue is how to model whole product life cycle in the early stages of product development. Although it is difficult to perform simulation in quantitatively exact manner, it is very effective and useful to achieve reliable sensitivity analysis with respect to various lifecycle parameters and to utilize the results of

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Dispatch of Service Engineer (per yea

Main Body Degradation Level

Door Degradation Level

Dispatch of Service Engineer (per yea

Occurrence of Level 2 for Door (per year)

Dispatch of Service Engineer (per year)

Degradation for Main Body

Degradation for Door

CIRP seminar on life cycle engineering Copenhagen, Denmark May 2003

Engineering for sustainable development - an obligatory skill of the future engineer

simulation qualitatively. An approach to model product life cycle behaviour by using state transition models is discussed, and some case study is shown for the validity of the approach. Maintenance can be considered as a control mechanism for product service quality, and further investigation is required for more robust and reliable life cycle management based on life cycle simulation. References 1. Westkaemper, E., Alting, L. and Arndt, G., (2000), Life Cycle Management and Assessment: Approaches and Vision Towards Sustainable Manufacturing, Annals of CIRP, 49/2:501-522. 2. Kimura,F., (2000), A Methodology for Design and Management of Product Life Cycle Adapted to Product Usage Modes, Proc. 33th CIRP Int. Seminar on Manufacturing Systems, KTH, 139142. 3. Kimura,F. (2001), Comprehensive Product Modelling for Designing Life Cycle Scenarios, EcoDesign, IEEE Computer Society, 1-6. 4. Kimura,F.,Hata,T. and Kobayashi,N. (2002),Reliability-Centered Maintenance Planning based on Computer Aided FMEA, 35th CIRP Manufacturing Systems Seminar, Seoul.

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