The development of successful new products requires the ability to predict, at the beginning of the product development process, the life cycle impact of design decisions. Downstream life cycle issues include considerations about how the product will be manufactured, shipped, installed, used, maintained and withdrawn or recycled. If subsequent problems are ignored (or poor estimates are produced), poor product designs will occur that can cause unforeseen problems and excessive costs. Sometimes, when problems are discovered during design verification or testing, problems can be corrected by the redesign, but the cost of redesigning at this latter stage may be prohibitive. 

Sometimes, companies should simply accept higher manufacturing costs and reduce the effectiveness of the product as a result of early design errors. If precise predictions of life cycle needs can be made early in the design cycle, it allows product development teams to create superior designs. This not only reduces the number of redesign iterations, time to market and development and manufacturing costs, but also improves the customer experience. Unfortunately, downstream life cycle needs are difficult to predict accurately during the early design phases for many reasons. First, during the early stages of design, when geometry and product specifications are not yet complete, manufacturing details and possible problems are very difficult to predict.