Integral Logistics Management — Operations Management and Supply Chain Management Within and Across Companies

1.1.5 The Product Life Cycle: Design and Manufacturing, Service and Use, Recycling and Disposal

Intended learning outcomes: Produce an overview on the product life cycle.



Products are made by converting goods. The use or utilization of products leads to their consumption or usage.

Consumption of goods (by the consumer) means, according to [MeWe18] the act of consu­ming or using up, and also, according to [Long15], the amount of goods that are used (up).

Goods that are used up must be disposed of properly. There is thus a life cycle to products.

Put simply, the product life cycle consists of three stages: design and manufacturing, use (and ultimately consumption), and disposal, which can be connected with recycling. [note 101].

Figure 1.1.5.1 shows the product life cycle. Design, manufacturing, service, and disposal are seen as value-adding processes,[note 102] symbolized by an arrow pointing in the direction of value-adding. Use is itself a process; however, it is a value-consuming one.

Fig. 1.1.5.1        The product life cycle.

The life cycle of material products generally begins with nature and leads from design and manufacturing to the consumer. A consumed product must then be disposed of, if ever possible connected with recycling of components and raw materials (circular economy, see Section 1.1.8). For materials that can not be reused, the product life cycle ends once again with nature, in that the materials are returned to the earth.

The life cycle of nonmaterial products begins with an issue about which something is decla­red. This issue, in a broad sense, can also be seen as ultimately connected to things in nature, whether to objects or at least to human thinking about objects. Disposal ends with the information being erased or deleted. In the broadest sense, then, it is also returned to nature.

Continuation in next subsection (1.1.5b)


Quiz on Chapter 1.1.1/1.1.5.: Goods, Products and the Product Life Cycle




Course section 1.1: Subsections and their intended learning outcomes