4. Traditional development or sequential approach

4.1 Product life cycle

Starting from the fact that the life of a product is similar to that of a human being, in that it passes from life to death, we will reason here from a chronological point of view. We distinguish between the product and the project dedicated to it, and begin by defining a product's life cycle, which should not be confused with its life curve. In fact, the life cycle represents the succession of product development, manufacturing, distribution, operation, maintenance and disposal phases (figure 1 ). This life cycle is part of the more general framework of a generic product's life curve, which represents all products manufactured according to this model. It is composed as follows...