A multi-agent system for managing the product lifecycle sustainability

Abstract: The international competitive market causes the increasing of shorten product life cycle and product development process with the improvement in term of time, cost and quality while increasing the waste generation. Product life cycle sustainability can reduce waste, conserve resources, use recycling materials, design product for easy disassembly and avoid using hazardous material. This paper proposes a knowledge management architecture, based on a multi-agent system, which focuses on the "sustainability" in order to manage knowledge in each stage of the product lifecycle, and particularly in the recovery process. The aim of this research work is to make the link between a decision-making system based on the agent's knowledge about the sustainability (environmental norms, rules...) and a PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) system. The software Agents will help the decision makers in each stage of the lifecycle and make them take into account the environmental impact of their decisions.