Upgrade planning for upgradable product design

The mass waste produced by society is said to have caused an increasing environmental load for years. We have proposed the realization of Inverse Manufacturing, which contains such concepts as reusing, remanufacturing, and upgradable design. To realize upgradable design, upgrade planning must be done in advance. This plan has information which is needed in upgradable design, such as when and to what degree a product upgrade should be done and what product users want. Because it is difficult to predict technology trends and user demands, a methodology for altering the upgrade plan is needed. In this paper, we propose a methodology for upgrade planning and for upgrade plan alterations, as well as an implementation tool.