This book contains the results of an Advanced Research Workshop that took place in Grenoble, France, in June 1988. The objective of this NATO ARW on Advanced Information Technologies for Industrial Material Flow Systems (MFS) was to bring together eminent research professionals from academia, industry and government who specialize in the study and application of information technology for material flow contro!' The current world status was reviewed and an agenda for needed research was discussed and established. The workshop focused on the following subjects: The nature of information within the material flow domain. Status of contemporary databases for engineering and material flow. Distributed databases and information integration. Artificial intelligence techniques and models for material flow problem solving. Digital communications for material flow systems. Robotics, intelligent systems, and material flow contro!' Material handling and storage systems information and contro!' Implementation, organization, and economic research-issues as related to the above. Material flow control is as important as manufacturing and other process control in the computer integrated environment. Important developments have been occurring internationally in information technology, robotics, artificial intelligence and their application in material flow/material handling systems. In a traditional sense, material flow in manufacturing (and other industrial operations) consists of the independent movement of work-in-process between processing entities in order to fulfill the requirements of the appropriate production and process plans. Generally, information, in this environment, has been communicated from processors to movers.

Cognitive science is a multidisciplinary science concerned with understanding and utilizing models of cognition. It has spawned a great dealof research on applications such as expert systems and intelligent tutoring systems, and has interacted closely with psychological research. However, it is generally accepted that it is difficult to apply cognitive-scientific models to medical training and practice. This book is based on a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in Italy in 1991, the purpose of which was to examine the impact ofmodels of cognition on medical training and practice and to outline future research programmes relating cognition and education, and in particular to consider the potential impact of cognitive science on medical training and practice. A major discovery presented in the book is that the research areas related to artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and medical decision making are considerably closer, both conceptually and theoretically, than many of the workshop participants originally thought.

The process of industrialization that began over two hundred years ago is continuing to change the way people work and live, and doing it very rapidly, in places like China and India. At the forefront of this movement is the profession of industrial engineering that develops and applies the technology that drives industrialization. This book describes how industrial engineering evolved over the past two centuries developing methods and principles for the planning, design, and control of production and service systems. The story focuses on the growth of the discipline at Purdue University where it helped shape the university itself and made substantial contributions to the industrialization of America and the world. The story includes colorful and creative people like Frank and Lillian Gilbreth of Cheaper by the Dozen fame. Lillian was the first lady of American engineering as well a founder of Purdue's Industrial Engineering.

The present volume contains a large number of the papers contributed to the Advanced Study Institute on the Psychological and Educational Foundations of Technology-Based Learning Environments, which took place in Crete in the summer of 1992. The purpose of the Advanced Study Institute was to bring together a small number of senior lecturers and advanced graduate students to investigate and discuss the psychological and educational foundations of technology-based learning environments and to draw the implications of recent research findings in the area of cognitive science for the development of educational technology. As is apparent from the diverse nature of the contributions included in this volume, the participants at the ASI came from different backgrounds and looked at the construction of technology -based learning environments from rather diverse points of view. Despite the diversity, a surprising degree of overlap and agreement was achieved. Most of the contributors agreed that the kinds of technology-supported learning environments we should construct should stimulate students to be active and constructive in their knowledge-building efforts, embed learning in meaningful and authentic activities, encourage collaboration and social interaction, and take into consideration students' prior knowledge and beliefs.

Manufacturing Cells: Control, Programming and Integration presents the issues surrounding the integration of manufacturing cells and small manufacturing systems. This book provides a variety of topics, including generally applicable cell controllers, cell management, and cell control. Organized into eight chapters, this book begins with an overview of the methods that allow the effective and fast integration of manufacturing devices into automated manufacturing cells. This text then describes the cell controller as being one element of a computer-integrated management system. Other chapters consider the innovative approach to the design, implementation, and integration of cell controllers in a manufacturing system. This book discusses as well the cell management language, which is a powerful computing environment for building complex manufacturing systems. The final chapter deals with the methods for describing the real-time, decision-making logic that is needed to control manufacturing cells. This book is a valuable resource for manufacturing engineers, managers, and supervisors.

This book is a collection of some of the papers that were presented during a NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on "Intelligent Systems: Safety, Reliability and Maintainability Issues" that was held in Kusadasi, Turkey during August 24- 28, 1992. Attendance at this workshop was mainly by invitation only, drawing people internationally representing industry, government and the academic community. Many of the participants were internationally recognized leaders in the topic of the workshop. The purpose of the ARW was to bring together a highly distinguished group of people with the express purpose of debating where the issues of safety, reliability and maintainability place direct and tangible constraints on the development of intelligent systems. As a consequence, one of the major debating points in the ARW was the definition of intelligence, intelligent behaviour and their relation to complex dynamic systems. Two major conclusions evolved from the ARW are: 1. A continued need exists to develop formal, theoretical frameworks for the architecture of such systems, together with a reflection on the concept of intelligence. 2. There is a need to focus greater attention to the role that the human play in controlling intelligent systems. The workshop began by considering the typical features of an intelligent system. The complexity associated with multi-resolutional architectures was then discussed, leading to the identification of a necessity for the use of a combinatorial synthesis/approach. This was followed by a session on human interface issues.

@EOI: AEI rEOMETPEI Epigram of the Academy of Plato in Athens Electromagnetism, the science of forces arising from Amber (HAEKTPON) and the stone of Magnesia (MArNHLIA), has been the fOWldation of major scientific breakthroughs, such as Quantum Mechanics and Theory of Relativity, as well as most leading edge technologies of the twentieth century. The accuracy of electromagnetic fields computations for engineering purposes has been significantly improved during the last decades, due to the deVelopment of efficient computational techniques and the availability of high performance computing. The present book is based on the contributions and discussions developed during the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Applied Computational Electromagnetics: State of the Art and Future Trends, which has taken place in Hellas, on the island of Samos, very close to the birthplace of Electromagnetism. The book covers the fundamental concepts, recent developments and advanced applications of Integral Equation and Metliod of Moments Techniques, Finite Element and BOWldary Element Methods, Finite Difference Time Domain and Transmission Line Methods. Furthermore, topics related to Computational Electromagnetics, such as Inverse Scattering, Semi-Analytical Methods and Parallel Processing Techniques are included. The collective presentation of the principal computational electromagnetics techniques, developed to handle diverse challenging leading edge technology problems, is expected to be useful to researchers and postgraduate students working in various topics of electromagnetic technologies.

Complex high-technology devices are in growing use in industry, service sectors, and everyday life. Their reliability and maintenance is of utmost importance in view of their cost and critical functions. This book focuses on this theme and is intended to serve as a graduate-level textbook and reference book for scientists and academics in the field. The chapters are grouped into five complementary parts that cover the most important aspects of reliability and maintenance: stochastic models of reliability and maintenance, decision models involving optimal replacement and repair, stochastic methods in software engineering, computational methods and simulation, and maintenance management systems. This wide range of topics provides the reader with a complete picture in a self-contained volume.

Assessment has long been recognized as a key feature in learning efficacy, especially through formative evaluation. Item banking, the storage and classification of test items, is an essential part of systematic assessment. This volume is based on a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held as part of the Special Programme on Advanced Educational Technology. The workshop brought together scholars from around the world to discuss and critically analyze the issues and problems associated with Subjective Probability Measurement (SPM) or the more generic research area called self-assessment. Recent advances in computer technology (expert systems, interactive video disks, and hypermedia) along with the developing sophistication of self-assessment scoring systems based on SPM made this conference particularly important and timely. The book is divided into three main parts: - The input: item banking and hypermedia - The process: subjective probabilities - The output: teaching and learning feedbacks. In summary, although SPM is a difficult theoretical concept for most educators to comprehend, the sophisticated nature of modern computer systems coupled with comprehensive formative and summative evaluation and self-assessment systems make SPM transparent to the user.

The Background to the Institute The NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) 'People and Computers - Applying an Anthropocentric Approach to Integrated Production Systems and Organisations' came about after the distribution of a NATO fact sheet to BruneI University, which described the funding of ASls. The 'embryonic' director of the ASI brought this opportunity to the attention of the group of people, (some at BruneI and some from outside), who were together responsible for the teaching and management of the course in Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) in BruneI's Department of Manufacturing and Engineering Systems. This course had been conceived in 1986 and was envisaged as a vehicle for teaching manufacturing engineering students the technology of information integration through project work. While the original idea of the course had also included the organisational aspects of CIM, the human factors questions were not considered. This shortcoming was recognised and the trial run of the course in 1988 contained some lectures on 'people' issues. The course team were therefore well prepared and keen to explore the People, Organisation and Technology (POT) aspects of computer integration, as applied to industrial production. A context was proposed which would allow the inclusion of people from many different backgrounds and which would open up time and space for reflection. The proposal to organise a NATO ASI was therefore welcomed by all concerned.