Title: Proposal of a multi-objective optimisation of product life cycle costs and environmental impacts

Authors: Daniele Cerri; Marco Taisch; Sergio Terzi

Addresses: Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133, Milano, Italy ' Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133, Milano, Italy ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Viale Marconi 5, 24044, Dalmine, Bergamo, Italy

Abstract: Advanced companies have to face new challenges in the modern world. Emerging countries, policy makers and industrial companies are all urged to take product life cycle into consideration. Therefore, companies have to identify the best life-cycle-oriented solution in order to compete in the global market. The literature has developed some life cycle methodologies, such as life cycle costing (LCC) and life cycle assessment (LCA). However, in most of the researches, these methodologies are used simply to evaluate costs and environmental impacts along the whole life cycle, and therefore most of the available researches are not able to guarantee reaching the optimal solution. The aim of this paper is to fill the gap by proposing an optimisation model for both product life-cycle costs and environmental impacts. The purpose is to evaluate all the possible alternatives, in order to return a set of optimal solutions. The model, based on NSGA-2, is tested and compared with other two models based on linear programming. Finally, the model is applied to a real case study.

Keywords: LCC; life cycle costing; LCA; life cycle assessment; life cycle optimisation; genetic algorithms; multi-objective optimisation; environmental impact; linear programming.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPLM.2013.063213

International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management, 2013 Vol.6 No.4, pp.381 - 401

Received: 15 Oct 2013
Accepted: 22 May 2014
Published online: 26 Jul 2014 *

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