Integration of Life Cycle Design in Industrial Practice: Problems and Solutions

Today in Europe´s companies Life Cycle Design (LCD), which is the environmentally friendly product development concerning the entire product life cycle, is rarely applied in the development practice. In January 2005, a three-year lasting project carried out by Darmstadt University of Technology and Alfred Karcher GmbH & Co. KG started. The project´s goals are to identify the obstacles of implementing LCD in practice and to demonstrate how to overcome them. The project aims at the lasting implementation of LCD at Karcher taking into account the industrial framework. In this paper Karcher-specific solutions developed for LCD-implementation are presented. These are based on the results of the methodical analysis of the product development process. Under consideration of the experiences made in the analysis step and the solution-development, first conclusions for the development of general LCD-implementation guidelines are drawn. The experiences gained in this research project will serve to develop general guidelines for the practical implementation of LCD in other companies