Handbook

This course is designed to provide postgraduate students with high level knowledge of Life Cycle Engineering principles and practices. The course will follow a typical product life cycle and the associated tools and techniques available. It starts with defining the concept of life cycle engineering, history and potential benefits (ecological and environmental). It then introduces the drivers behind this concept such as legislation and standards, environmental requirements. Next, the concepts of life cycle thinking, Cradle-to-Grave, Cradle-to-Cradle, Energy and Eco-efficiency are introduced. In the following section, generic environmental impact assessment tools and the concept of sustainable product development and the associated eco-design tools are introduced.  The course continues with concepts related to usage and the end-of-life stages of product life cycle. These topics include Product collection, Reverse logistics and End-of-Life decision making, Tools and technologies, Disassemble sequence planning, Disassembly technologies, Reuse and remanufacturing principles, product monitoring and testing, materials recycling techniques. The course finally finishes with economics and future trends such as Economic models, Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Product Service Systems (PSS).