ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of product condition monitoring for end-of-life management and presents a framework for effective product life cycle management. To achieve effective product life cycle monitoring, it discusses a framework that interconnects sensor-embedded products, a remote monitoring center, maintenance centers, disassembly centers, recycling centers, disposal centers, and remanufacturing centers. Customers bring their products to the maintenance center when the products are predicted to fail or when the products are malfunctioning. The recovered components from disassembly center that are either physically damaged or have negligible remaining life are dispatched to disposal centers. The product life cycle monitoring framework was implemented using 10,000 desktop computers with sensors embedded to monitor their hard drive as a simulation model. Embedded sensors that register the working conditions of product components can facilitate online health monitoring of product components, detect or predict product or component failures, and estimate the remaining life of products or components.
