Until recently, the engineering design community has focused on addressing isolated engineering design tasks by developing systems such as computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), computer-aided engineering (CAE), or product data management (PDM). Each of these systems has been designed to assist the engineer in a specific task that required little if any cooperation wit...

ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS play an increasingly important role in design and development efforts of many industries. "Cradle to grave" assessments are being used not only by product designers and manufacturers, but also by product users (and environmentalists) to consider the relative merits of various available products and to improve the environmental acceptability of products. Life-cycle e...