1. Industrial context

1.1 Life cycles and development patterns

Especially in the English-speaking world, it's customary to speak of the "paradigm" of the life cycle. "Paradigm" is a word of Greek origin already used (in the sense it is still used today) in the 4th century B.C. by the philosopher Plato. A "paradigm" is a kind of model that serves as a guide and benchmark for human activity. In our case, the life-cycle paradigm describes the episodes (also called stages or phases) of a temporal sequence relating to the creation and exploitation of a good (which, in our case, is industrial in nature). The life cycle begins with the birth of the project and ends with the physical disappearance of the asset. The cyclical nature of the process is reflected in the reproduction of the same episodes for all goods...