Recently, the manufacturing business is moving from an economy of scale to an economy of scope, under global competition for customers’ satisfaction. Under those conditions, for companies around the world, surviving in business means to satisfy at least three challenges: granting the on-duty performance, at the point-of-service; addressing value-added intangibles; and lowering life-cycle eco impact. These changes in industry reflect on the human society; they are driven both through economical and political measures, as well as being increasingly affected by ecological constraints. Servicing and recovering become challenging demands. Besides technical aspects, the emphasis is in enabling economic profits on the supply chain (by new businesses in maintenance, remanufacturing, etc.), with account of legal acts (suppliers responsibility, landfill regulation, etc.), ruled by voluntary agreements or by compulsory targets frames. Our emphasis is on the following new paradigms: extended virtual enterprise and extended product, service engineering, life-cycle engineering, product life-cycle management, proactive maintenance, recovery, reuse, recycling, ubiquitous computing and communication, and so forth.
Life Cycle Management for Product-Service Systems