Design improvement method using product usage data in a closed-loop PLM

Recently, companies have been able to gather product usage data during middle of life (MOL) owing to newly developed technologies such as RFID, various sensors, wireless telecommunication, and so on. Even though the technological infrastructure for gathering product usage data is established, the application of newly gathered product usage data is still in its infancy. If MOL data can be transformed into suitable information and knowledge for product design improvement with appropriate methods, it will be fruitful. To this end, in this study, we propose a design improvement method based on product usage data which are gathered by product embedded information device (PEID) in a closed-loop PLM.