In the 21st century, computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) systems will not only be the economic development tools but will also be the essential means of achieving a higher level of flexibility, cohesiveness and performance. CIM systems are beginning to settle into our society and industries, with greater emphasis on the integration of economic, cultural and social aspects together with design, planning, factory automation and artificial intelligent systems.This volume of proceedings brings together 10 keynote and invited speaker addresses, and over 180 papers by practitioners from 28 countries. It documents current research and in-depth studies on the fundamental aspects of advanced CIM systems and their practical applications. The papers fall into 3 main sections: CIM Related Issues; Industrial AI Applications Aspects; and Concurrent Engineering, Advanced Design, Simulation and Flexible Manufacturing Systems.

The goal of enterprise integration is the development of computer-based tools that facilitate coordination of work and information flow across organizational boundaries. These proceedings, the first on EI modeling technologies, provide a synthesis of the technical issues involved; describe the various approaches and where they overlap, complement, or conflict with each other; and identify problems and gaps in the current technologies that point to new research.The leading edge of a movement that began with computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM), EI now seeks to engage the development of computer-based tools to control not only manufacturing but the allied areas of materials supply, accounting, and inventory control. EI technology is pushing forward research in areas such as distributed AI, concurrent engineering, task coordination, human-computer interaction, and distributed planning and scheduling. These proceedings provide the first common technical ground for comparing, evaluating, or coordinating these efforts.Charles J. Petrie, Jr., is Senior Member of Technical Staff at MCC in Austin, Texas.Topics include: Computer Integrated Manufacturing. Open System Architecture Standards. The results of five workshops on EI modeling topics: Model Integration, Model/Application Namespace, Heterogeneous Execution Environments, Metrics and Methodologies, and Coordination Process Models.

While ultra-precision machines are now achieving sub-nanometer accuracy, unique challenges continue to arise due to their tight specifications. Written to meet the growing needs of mechanical engineers and other professionals to understand these specialized design process issues, Introduction to Precision Machine Design and Error Assessment places

Fuzzy Logic and Soft Computing contains contributions from world-leading experts from both the academic and industrial communities. The first part of the volume consists of invited papers by international authors describing possibilistic logic in decision analysis, fuzzy dynamic programming in optimization, linguistic modifiers for word computation, and theoretical treatments and applications of fuzzy reasoning. The second part is composed of eleven contributions from Chinese authors focusing on some of the key issues in the fields: stable adaptive fuzzy control systems, partial evaluations and fuzzy reasoning, fuzzy wavelet neural networks, analysis and applications of genetic algorithms, partial repeatability, rough set reduction for data enriching, limits of agents in process calculus, medium logic and its evolution, and factor spaces canes. These contributions are not only theoretically sound and well-formulated, but are also coupled with applicability implications and/or implementation treatments. The domains of applications realized or implied are: decision analysis, word computation, databases and knowledge discovery, power systems, control systems, and multi-destinational routing. Furthermore, the articles contain materials that are an outgrowth of recently conducted research, addressing fundamental and important issues of fuzzy logic and soft computing.

BACKGROUND There is an increasing awareness that 'time to market' is the key competitive issue in the manufacturing industry today. The global markets are demanding products that are well designed, are of high quality and are at low prices with ever decreasing lead times. Hence manufacturers are forced to utilize the best methods of technology with efficient control and management accompanied by suitably enabling organizational structures. Concurrent engineering (CE) is widely seen to be the methodology that can help satisfy these strenuous demands and keep the profitability and viability of product developers, manufacturers and suppliers high. There have been many reported successes of CE in practice. Rover were able to launch Land Rover Discovery in 18 months as compared with 48-63 months for similar products in Europe. Because of its early introduction to the market it became the best selling product in its class. AT&T report part counts down to one ninth of their previous levels and quality one hundred times (in surface defects) for VLSI (very improvements of large scale integration) circuits as a result of using the CE approach. WHO SHOULD READ THIS TEXT? This book will aim to provide a sound basis for the very diverse subject known as concurrent engineering. Concurrent engineering is recognized by an increasingly large proportion of the manufacturing industry as a necessity in order to compete in today's markets. This recognition has created the demand for information, awareness and training in good concurrent engineering practice.