A life cycle cost-based product design approach through integral architecture

Life cycle cost is one of the most important factors to be considered in a product design process. This paper presents a mathematical model to cooperate life cycle cost into product design process through the methodology of integral architecture. First, we define a function-function matrix to show the revenues of coupling an interface, and an interface-interface matrix to show the coefficients influencing the global performance. Based on these matrices, we present an optimization model to try to get a low level of life cycle cost without too much local performance lost. Data can be collected by the method of design structure matrix. And several special cases are used to show the performance of this model.