**3. Product life cycle**

**2. Products diversity**

erties for certain products.

components.

and life cycle is bigger.

tions, and recycling of end-life products.

2 Product Lifecycle Management - Terminology and Applications

and were developed to solve the production industry problems.

Standard living increase of the population has led to the development of new materials and unique services. Those services were hard to be guessed in the past. The diversity of the products is different from one domain to another. All this requires a rigorous planning on waste and resource management in order to obtain some products or to recycle them after end life. The arising problems caused by technological development have begun to affect the life of our planet. This fact has led to the emergence of management measures and decision-making on emerging issues related to the use of this kind of materials, resources, environmental pollu-

The world's increasing production has led to the use of special materials [5, 6] as composite materials and smart materials. These have been created and adopted to solve a number of industry production problems, to replace the traditional materials used for manufacturing process of the products. These were created to improve physical and mechanical properties

There are different kinds of products on the market. There are different approaches in the word regarding the classification of the products in the world. An approach can be made following their complexity. We can say that there are simple products, or complex ones, which are assembled by another product. From the point of view of materials which is embedded in products, we can say that some products are from a single material, from two, or from many constituents. From the recycling point of view, at the end of the products' life, the products which are made by a single material are easier to be managed. Unfortunately, these products represent a small percentage of the diversity of existing products. Today the materials' constituents are very vast, and the constituents of the products are composed of many chemical substances. These are combined in order to achieve, at the end, a material with custom prop-

Another type of the products is represented by a large used, a **product in great demand**. These types represented in generally the goods, which integrate more options to use. The beneficiaries of them have the possibility to have more devices integrate in a single one. From PLM point of view, each of the extra options is traded like single one, and all are integrated in a single one. An example of this can be the smartphones or smarts TVs. Each of them is designed for a specific function, to communicate or to watch and get some information. At the same time, we benefit from clock, internet access, calendar, games, and many programs that help us. Also, it is observed in an abundance of mechatronic products on the market. These products contain mechanical, electrical, electronic, and software

Another type of the products is represented by **customized goods**. These are customized for each individual customer. They must meet certain specific personalized requirements. In general for these types of products, the cost price is higher, manufacturing time is increasing,

Nowadays, the life of the products has been getting shorter. This is due to technological progress and the requirements of today's demanding market. The life of the products decreases

because new products appeared and those have replaced the old ones quickly.

The product life cycle includes three main stages: **beginning of product life (BOL)**, **middle of product life (MOL),** and **end of product life (EOL)**. These stages consist of processes which create the PLM process flow.

BOL is the most complex phase of the product life cycle including conceive, design, prototyping, testing, development, production process elaboration, and manufacturing of the product.

In the second phase of the product life cycle, MOL comprises distribution/sales, product use of the final customer, maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) of the product.

End of product life is the last stages of the product life cycle. This stage includes retire, disposal, and recycle of the product.
