This Proceedings contains the papers presented at the IFAC Symposium on Manufacturing, Modeling, Management and Control (MIM 2000), held in Patras, Greece, on 12-14 July 2000. MIM is a long-running series of IFAC meetings featuring the best work on the development, comparison and classification of manufacturing systems. In this Proceedings, key engineering topics, such as agile manufacturing and intelligent manufacturing, are presented alongside more management-related issues as well as some of the fundamental control theory applicable to these areas. Altogether, over 90 papers are presented.

This Proceedings contains the papers presented at the IFAC Workshop on Manufacturing, Modelling, Management and Control (MIM 2001), held in Prague, Czech Republic, on 2-4 August 2001. This regular IFAC workshop has developed a reputation for high quality, and regularly features notable contributions by leading world experts. This Proceedings volume shows that the latest Workshop was no exception. The papers feature subjects such as production planning, virtual manufacturing, scheduling design, planning management, monitoring and diagnostics, manufacturing and machining, software, decision support systems, and modelling, as well as traditional and modern disciplines of manufacturing automation. The Proceedings of the MIM 2001 workshop are essential reading for anyone with an interest in the latest developments in the modelling and control of manufacturing systems.

Just as no man is an island, so no business can operate without being part of a network of businesses proactively collaborating and sharing information for mutual success. This book presents some of the latest thinking on collaborative systems by leading experts in the field.

Rapid One-of-a-kind Product Development discusses research in the development of new enabling technologies for small and medium companies. Scientific advancements presented include a novel product data modelling scheme to model product design, manufacturability and knowledge under a common data object; customised product development in a distributed environment; and new adaptive scheduling methods for the optimal production of a wide variety of customised products, taking into consideration all of the possible changes from customers and the uncertainties in manufacturing. The book also includes research towards a computer aided customer interface, which allows customer requirements and changes to be processed and integrated with technical designs in real time; adaptive and concurrent CAD methods and algorithms; and product modelling and system integration technologies. The reader will learn how to: • translate customer requirements to technical attributes; • develop new and innovative products to meet customer requirements and expectations; • evaluate and optimise a project design; • design production systems and use them efficiently; and • manage a variety of customised products. Rapid One-of-a-kind Product Development demonstrates how to develop new methods, tools and algorithms to address the problems in a mass customisation environment. It is a valuable source of information for researchers and engineers in the fields of design and manufacturing.

E-Manufacturing: Business Paradigms and Supporting Technologies opens with a set of interesting selections from invited authors, covering perspectives such as concurrent engineering in product and process design, the tools needed to deal with people, relationships and networks, enterprise networking in Europe. This section closes with business and innovation topics, handling issues such as knowledge, innovation and investment, and joint ventures for innovation and competitiveness. The remaining parts of the book tackle the following e-manufacturing issues: advanced logistics, mechatronics, manufacturing systems integration and supporting technologies.

The work contains the results of the Sixth International Conference on Advanced Manufacturing Systems and Technology – AMST’02, which was held in Udine in June 2002. It presents up-to-date information on the latest developments – research results and experience – in the field of machining of conventional and advanced materials, machine tools and flexible manufacturing systems, forming, nonconventional processes, robotics, measurement and control, quality, design and ecodesign, rapid prototyping, rapid tooling and manufacturing, materials and mechanics.

Despite the numerous competitive advantages of one-of-a-kind production (OKP), the low efficiency and high costs associated with OKP companies threaten to push their business opportunities into the hands of cheaper overseas suppliers. One-of-a-Kind Production introduces a novel strategy and technology to help OKP companies to efficiently mass-produce customized products. In One-of-a-Kind Production, case studies from OKP companies are used to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the OKP strategy and technology. These case studies include: a structural steel construction company, a manufacturer of specifically ordered compressors and refrigeration systems, a customized high pressure vessel manufacturing company, and a custom window and door manufacturer. To help readers understand OKP strategy and technology, the authors offer a year’s free access to the OKP Management and Control Software System. This system is based on a new integrated production control and management concept, namely product production structure. It is a useful tool – and One-of-a-Kind Production is a valuable guide – for production engineers and managerial staff in manufacturing companies, as well as for university researchers and graduate students.

Planning and improving of production systems and manufacturing processes is a most complex task in engineering. In small and medium sized enterprises (SME's) it is usually carried out by a group of enterprise planners from different departments within a planning project. The main issue of this research is to overcome the logical and technical boundaries between the highly-interrelated modelling experts and their specific modelling tools and partial planning models as well as to efficiently coordinate their distributed, cooperative planning tasks. Therefore, a methodical integration concept as well as a groupware-based cooperation concept was developed. Now it is possible to combine the large number of sophisticated modelling tools, factory simulators as well as GPM tools, and to guarantee a seamless planning process. The conceptual ideas were implemented in a prototypical toolbox to show the technical realization of the flexible concepts for integration and cooperation support. (Back cover).