ABSTRACT
In the product life-cycle management system, there are different product development targets, such as quality, cost, time and environmental burden and so on, which are realized by many elements of product life cycle process of design, manufacturing, selling, using and recycling, etc. These elements, called as life cycle elements, make up of the life cycle path. By changing the life cycle elements, different life cycle paths could be created to realize the development targets in different levels. The elements and their influence factors in the life cycle path could be considered as elements of a polychromatic set, the development targets could be its pigmentation colors, and then the design model of product life cycle based on the polychromatic set could be established. The contour matrix that maps relationships between the targets and the life cycle elements and the constraint digraph of the life cycle path are built in the model. Through formalization reasoning on the model, all of feasible life cycle paths, which consist of different life cycle elements and realize different development targets, would be got and the optimization of product life cycle design could be achieved.
