Knowledge Management is a wide, critical and strategic issue for all the com- nies, from the SMEs to the most complex organizations. The key of competiti- ness is knowledge, because of the necessity of reactivity, flexibility, agility and innovation capacities. Knowledge is difficult to measure itself but what is visible, this is the way of improving products, technologies and enterprise organizations. During the last four years, based on the experience of most of the best experts around the World, CIRP (The International Academy for Production Engineering) has decided to prepare and structure a Network of Excellence (NoE) proposal. The European Community accepted to found the VRL-KCiP (Virtual Research La- ratory – Knowledge Community in Production). As its name indicates it, the aim of this NoE was really to build a «Knowledge Community in Production ». This was possible and realistic because the partners were representative of the most important universities in Europe and also because of strong partnerships with laboratories far from Europe (Japan, Australia, South Africa, USA, etc...). Based on such powerful partnership, the main issue was to help European manufacturing industry to define and structure the strategic knowledge in order to face the strategic worldwide challenges. Manufacturing in Europe currently has two essential aspects: 1. It has to be knowledge intensive given the European demands for high-tech products and services (e.g. electronics, medicines).

Digital Enterprise Technology (DET) is more than a concept. Companies arc facing new challenges in a context where the references are mostly numerical. Nowadays, digital methods and tools arc widely generalized. DET 2008 allowed excellent exchanges about "the collection of systems and methods for the digital modelling and analysis of the global product development and realisation process, in the context of lifecycle management". This book of proceedings gives a short vices of the keynotes and proposes the text of the papers that have been presented during DET 2008. This gives a clear view of the actual state of the art and of the industrial needs. This book of proceedings is organized with respect to the topics that were addressed during the conference.

The aim of this book is to present the terminology, applications, trends, and developments in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). This book has a total of seven chapters that treat the fundamental and future terminology used in PLM, aspects regarding the design, customization, and development of products, products testing, supply chain optimization, and recycling of the products made of special materials.

The concept of concurrent engineering (CE) was first developed in the 1980s. Now often referred to as transdiciplinary engineering, it is based on the idea that different phases of a product life cycle should be conducted concurrently and initiated as early as possible within the Product Creation Process (PCP). The main goal of CE is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the PCP and reduce errors in later phases, as well as incorporating considerations – including environmental implications – for the full lifecycle of the product. It has become a substantive methodology in many industries, and has also been adopted in the development of new services and service support. This book presents the proceedings of the 25th ISPE Inc. International Conference on Transdisciplinary Engineering, held in Modena, Italy, in July 2018. This international conference attracts researchers, industry experts, students, and government representatives interested in recent transdisciplinary engineering research, advancements and applications. The book contains 120 peer-reviewed papers, selected from 259 submissions from all continents of the world, ranging from the theoretical and conceptual to papers addressing industrial best practice, and is divided into 11 sections reflecting the themes addressed in the conference program and addressing topics as diverse as industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing; human-centered design; modeling, simulation and virtual design; and knowledge and data management among others. With an overview of the latest research results, product creation processes and related methodologies, this book will be of interest to researchers, design practitioners and educators alike.

During its life cycle, a product produces waste that is over 20 times its weight. As such it is critical to develop products that are sustainable. Currently product development processes lack high quality methods and tools that are empirically validated to support development of sustainable products. This book is a compilation of over forty cutting edge international research papers from the 22nd CIRP International Design Conference, written by eminent researchers from 15 countries, on engineering design process, methods and tools, broadly for supporting sustainable product development. A variety of new insights into the product development process, as well as a host of methods and tools that are at the cutting edge of design research are discussed and explained covering a range of diverse topics. The areas covered include: Sustainable design and manufacturing, Design synthesis and creativity, Global product development and product life cycle management, Design for X (safety, reliability, manufacturability, etc.), and Design taxonomy, ontology and standards. CIRP Design 2012: Sustainable Product Development provides researchers in design, engineering and sustainability access to some of the latest, quality research in this area. Practitioners and educators of engineering design and sustainability will find an empirically validated suite of methods and tools that can be applied and taught to develop their practices.

Covers the development, design, and utilization of virtual organizations and communities and the resulting impact of these venues.

This book provides specific topics intending to contribute to an improved knowledge on Technology Evaluation and Selection in a Life Cycle Perspectives. Although each chapter will present possible approaches and solutions, there are no recipes for success. Each reader will find his/her balance in applying the different topics to his/her own specific situation. Case studies presented throughout will help in deciding what fits best to each situation, but most of all any ultimate success will come out of the interplay between the available solutions and the specific problem or opportunity the reader is faced with.

This book of proceedings is the synthesis of all the papers, including keynotes presented during the 20th CIRP Design conference. The book is structured with respect to several topics, in fact the main topics that serve at structuring the program. For each of them, high quality papers are provided. The main topic of the conference was Global Product Development. This includes technical, organizational, informational, theoretical, environmental, performance evaluation, knowledge management, and collaborative aspects. Special sessions were related to innovation, in particular extraction of knowledge from patents.

The changing manufacturing environment requires more responsive and adaptable manufacturing systems. The theme of the 4th International Conference on Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual production (CARV2011) is “Enabling Manufacturing Competitiveness and Economic Sustainability”. Leading edge research and best implementation practices and experiences, which address these important issues and challenges, are presented. The proceedings include advances in manufacturing systems design, planning, evaluation, control and evolving paradigms such as mass customization, personalization, changeability, re-configurability and flexibility. New and important concepts such as the dynamic product families and platforms, co-evolution of products and systems, and methods for enhancing manufacturing systems’ economic sustainability and prolonging their life to produce more than one product generation are treated. Enablers of change in manufacturing systems, production volume and capability scalability and managing the volatility of markets, competition among global enterprises and the increasing complexity of products, manufacturing systems and management strategies are discussed. Industry challenges and future directions for research and development needed to help both practitioners and academicians are presented.

The collection of papers in this book comprises the proceedings of the 23rd CIRP Design Conference held between March 11th and March 13th 2013 at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany. The event was organized in cooperation with the German Academic Society for Product Development – WiGeP. The focus of the conference was on »Smart Product Engineering«, covering two major aspects of modern product creation: the development of intelligent (“smart”) products as well as the new (“smart”) approach of engineering, explicitly taking into account consistent systems integration. Throughout the 97 papers contained in these proceedings, a range of topics are covered, amongst them the different facets and aspects of what makes a product or an engineering solution “smart”. In addition, the conference papers investigate new ways of engineering for production planning and collaboration towards Smart Product Engineering. The publications provide a solid insight into the pressing issues of modern digital product creation facing increasing challenges in a rapidly changing industrial environment. They also give implicit advice how a “smart” product or engineering solution (processes, methods and tools) needs to be designed and implemented in order to become successful.