Besides the life cycle of products, a sound understanding of the factory life cycle becomes increasingly important for the planning and operation of factory systems with regard to environmental targets. Decisions during factory planning predominantly predetermine the later environmental performance. The decision context is highly complex as it entails heterogeneous life cycles and manifold interactions. Existing approaches as well as methods and model-based support tools fail to provide a comprehensive understanding of the factory life cycle. Therefore, a concept for the life cycle planning of factory systems is presented. A strong interaction between data, modeling methods and visualization techniques is proposed that facilitate deepening the knowledge about the factory life cycle. The application is demonstrated on the case of a battery cell factory and a process chain for automotive components.