The quest for building systems that can function automatically has attracted a lot of attention over the centuries and created continuous research activities. As users of these systems we have never been satisfied, and demand more from the artifacts that are designed and manufactured. The current trend is to build autonomous systems that can adapt to changes in their environment. While there is a lot to be done before we reach this point, it is not possible to separate manufacturing systems from this trend. The desire to achieve fully automated manufacturing systems is here to stay. Manufacturing systems of the twenty-first century will demand more flexibility in product design, process planning, scheduling and process control. This may well be achieved through integrated software and hardware archi tectures that generate current decisions based on information collected from manufacturing systems environment, and execute these decisions by converting them into signals transferred through communication network. Manufacturing technology has not yet reached this state. However, the urge for achieving this goal is transferred into the term 'Intelligent Systems' that we started to use more in late 1980s. Knowledge-based systems, our first efforts in this endeavor, were not sufficient to generate the 'Intelligence' required - our quest still continues. Artificial neural network technology is becoming an integral part of intelligent manufacturing systems and will have a profound impact on the design of autonomous engineering systems over the next few years."

Covering key topics in the field such as technological innovation, human-centered sustainable engineering and manufacturing, and manufacture at a global scale in a virtual world, this book addresses both advanced techniques and industrial applications of key research in interactive design and manufacturing. Featuring the full papers presented at the 2014 Joint Conference on Mechanical Design Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing, which took place in June 2014 in Toulouse, France, it presents recent research and industrial success stories related to implementing interactive design and manufacturing solutions.

Integrated circuits are finding ever wider applications through a range of industries. Introduction to VLSI Process Engineering presents the design principles for devices, describes the overall VLSI process, and deals with the essential manufacturing technologies and inspection procedures.

While ion-exchange processes were originally used for the treatment of very dilute solutions, many applications for the treatment of concentrated solu tions have been developed in recent years. In these situations, the mass transfer bottlenecks are located in the~, rather than the liquid phase. Therefore, the development of quantitative models for ion-exchange kinetics requires knowledge about the conductance characteristics of ions and solvent in the solid phase. A useful approach towards this aim is the study of trans port characteristics of these species, and of their interactions in solid ion exchange membranes. Many different transport processes and related phenomena can be observed in membrane-solution systems, e.g., ion migration, electroosmosis, diffusion arid self-diffusion, osmosis, hydraulic flow, hyperfiltration (reverse osmosis) or ultrafiltration, streaming potential and streaming current, and membrane potentials (also called "membrane concentration potentials"). It is important to correlate all these phenomena so as to avoid a very large number of unnec essary measurements. Such correlation is often possible [Meares, 1976] since all these phenomena are determined by the ease of migration of the different species across the membrane. Important correlations have been made and summar ized even before high-capacity ion-exchange membranes became commercially available [Sollner, 1950, 197iJ.

CIM (computer integrated manufacturing) is an acronym that has become fairly well known in recent years in manufacturing and related engineering circles. The purpose of the CIM Project at IIASA is to close the widening gap between the pace of technological, economic, and social events, on the one hand, and the progress of understanding those events, on the other. The IIASA study has attempted, first, to define the existing world situation with regard to the underlying technologies of CIM, and the degrees to which technologies such as NC/CNC machine tools, robotics, and CAD/CAM are currently being used in metal products manufacturing. The methodology adopted in the study is eclectic. It is multiperspective and multidisciplinary, as well as multinational. It incorporates elements of both "bottom-up" and "top-down" approaches. Finally, it incorporates both historical analysis and "model" forecasts of the future, together with scenarios analyses. This second volume of the series surveys past techniques and forecasts the future of CIM.

Natural Products, broadly defined as high value chemical entities derived from plants or microbial sources, have been known and exploited for many years. In recent years, as the need for higher potency and predictability of such products has increased, more sophisticated concentration and isolation procedures have been developed. With the passage of time, such procedures have been rationalized in terms of scientific principles but, in general, theory has followed behind practice, leading at any given time to an absence from the literature of methods which are truly state of the art. Downstream Processing of Natural Products: A Practical Handbook is a highly practical manual which addresses this issue, and guides researchers and industrial workers through the many potential pitfalls of natural product isolation. The contributors to this volume, all of whom have wide practical experience in this field, present state--of--the--art techniques and observations. The three main stages of natural product purification are covered, namely product release, capture, and purification, and both proteins and secondary metabolites are covered. There is special mention of the requirements of the regulatory authorities with respect to Good Manufacturing Practice, and practical guidance is given on scale--up procedures and process scale instrumentation. Downstream Processing of Natural Products: A Practical Handbook will provide essential practical guidance to all those involved in natural product isolation. This includes academic and industrial researchers, postgraduate students and technicians working in the biotechnology field.

First-line managers have to maintain the integrity of facilities, control manufacturing processes, and handle unusual or emergency situations, as well as respond to the pressures of production demand. On a daily basis, they are closest to the operating personnel who may be injured by a process accident, and they are in the best position to spot problem conditions and to act to contain them. This book offers these managers "how-to" information on process safety management program execution in the operations and maintenance departments, recommending technical and administrative process safety activities for the entire life cycle of the plant. Helpful tables and references add to the value of this process safety resource.

Sustainable consumption and production (SCP) was adopted as a priority area during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 and has since become one of the main vehicles for targeting international sustainability policy. Sustainable consumption focuses on formulating equitable strategies that foster the highest quality of life, the efficient use of natural resources, and the effective satisfaction of human needs while simultaneously promoting equitable social development, economic competitiveness, and technological innovation. But this is a complex topic and, as the challenges of sustainability grow larger, there is a need to re-imagine how SCP policies can be formulated, governed and implemented. The EU-funded project "Sustainable Consumption Research Exchanges" (SCORE!) consists of around 200 experts in the field of sustainable innovation and sustainable consumption. The SCORE! philosophy is that innovation in SCP policy can be achieved only if experts that understand business development, (sustainable) solution design, consumer behaviour and system innovation policy work together in shaping it. Sustainable technology design can be effective only if business can profitably make the products and consumers are attracted to them. To understand how this might effectively happen, the expertise of systems thinkers must be added to the mix. System Innovation for Sustainability 1 is the first result of a unique positive confrontation between experts from all four communities. It examines what SCP is and what it could be, provides a state-of-the-art review on the governance of change in SCP policy and looks at the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches. The SCORE! experts are working with actors in industry, consumer groups and eco-labelling organisations in the key consumption areas of mobility, food and agriculture, and energy use and housing - responsible for 70% of the life-cycle environmental impacts of Western societies - with the aim of stimulating, fostering or forcing change to SCP theory in practice. The System Innovation for Sustainability series will continue with three further volumes of comprehensive case studies in each of these three critical consumption areas. Each chapter of this book examines problems and suggests solutions from a business, design, consumer and system innovation perspective. It primarily examines the differing solutions necessary in the consumer economies of the West, but also comments on the differing needs in rapidly emerging economies such as China, as well as base-of-the-pyramid economies. The System Innovation for Sustainability series is the fruit of the only major international research network on SCP and will set the standard in this field for some years to come. It will be required reading for all involved in the policy debate on sustainable production and consumption from government, business, academia and NGOs for designers, scientists, businesses and system innovators.

Digital Industry can provide the framework for examining the challenges of future production technology. This book describes some of the various aspects that can, and may, influence future manufacturing. Computational intelligence techniques, cyber-physical systems, virtual and cloud-based manufacturing and man-machine interaction are studied and some of the most recent research completed by international experts in industry and academia is considered. Case studies provide practical solutions.

K.J. Ives Professor of Public Health Engineering University College London The aggregation of small particles in liquids, to form flocs which are large enough to settle, or to be filtered, is a common operation in industrial processes, and water and wastewater treatment. This aggregation, given the general title flliocculation in this book, may be brought about by the addition of chemicals to reduce the stability of the original suspension, by neutralising electrical forces of repulsion, by the addition of chemicals (polymers) to link particles by bridging action, by the addition of chemicals which form particles to increase collision proba bilities, and by the input of energy leading to hydrodynamically induced collisions. The particles undergoing flocculation may range from colloidal in the nanometer size range, through micro scopic (micron) size, up to visible particles in the millimeter size range; that is a total size range of six orders of magnitude. Consequently the colloid chemist and the hydrodynamicist are both concerned with the interactions that take place, and to them the engineer must turn, to obtain the fundamental information ne cessary for the process design and its associated hardware."

For many years production management has no longer been confined to individual production facilities. Intensive cooperation with suppliers has become an integral part of production management. In recent years two further developments have gained ground. On the one hand enterprises have been specialising and concentrating on their core competencies with outsourcing as a consequence, on the other hand globalization has intensified the range of choice among suppliers. Increased dependence on suppliers called for new forms of cooperative ventures. Strategic and legal issues had to be considered and production management had to include sophisticated logistic chain management. These developments have led to the concept of Extended Enterprise'. Among many other topics, this book discusses: co-operation between companies; supply chain management; agile and virtual management; integration of the logistic chain; and production and logistical strategies. The book comprises the proceedings of the Working Conference on Organizing the Extended Enterprise, sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), which was held in Ascona, Switzerland in September 1997. It will be of great importance to researchers, managers and consultants in production, logistics and information and other areas of organizational development.

If a Writer would know how to behave himself with relation to Posterity; let him consider in old Books, what he finds, that he is glad to know; and what Omissions he most laments. Jonathan Swift This book emerges from a long story of teaching. I taught chemical engineering thermodynamics for about ten years at the University of Naples in the 1960s, and I still remember the awkwardness that I felt about any textbook I chose to consider-all of them seemed to be vague at best, and the standard of logical rigor seemed immensely inferior to what I could find in books on such other of the students in my first class subjects as calculus and fluid mechanics. One (who is now Prof. F. Gioia of the University of Naples) once asked me a question which I have used here as Example 4. 2-more than 20 years have gone by, and I am still waiting for a more intelligent question from one of my students. At the time, that question compelled me to answer in a way I didn't like, namely "I'll think about it, and I hope I'll have the answer by the next time we meet. " I didn't have it that soon, though I did manage to have it before the end of the course.

In important branches of manufacturing industries, especially those producing chemicals, polymers, semiconductors, ceramics, metals and alloys, analytical process control is already an integral part of the company. Far reaching decisions with respect to quality, ecology and economy are based on the respective analytical data. The goal of this practice-oriented book is to introduce chemists, engineers and technicians to the strategies, techniques and efficiency of modern process analytical chemistry. The author is especially aiming at those professionals in small and medium enterprises who have to carry out process control tasks in a "solo-run".

Ceramics always was a broad field and now as the Like my predecessor I have provided only defini boundaries continue to expand it is one of the truly tions. No effort has been made to include pronuncia interdisciplinary areas. This publication, in its re tion, derivations, or syllabication of entries. A large vised form, must reflect this. The trend is toward number of acronyms and abbreviations have been more utilization of ceramics as integrated materials included. The text is in fact somewhat hybrid because together with polymers, metals, and other ceramics, many of the entries appear similar to those in an for both structural and electronic applications. Thus, encyclopedia while struggling to remain concise. new fabrication technology is providing the new Reemphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of mod vocabulary of this growth; areas like thin-film proc em ceramics, and the varied backgrounds of those essing, sol-gel techniques, as used by the electronics who are interested in or work in the industry, striking industry; fiber forming, weaving, and ultrahigh vac a balance between the many allied disciplines con uum and temperature methods must be included in a tributing to ceramics and the hope of being compre glossary of vocabulary purporting to deal with ce hensive but yet concise has been a difficult task. I ramics and their science."

The 1990s have seen many large-scale efforts to transform companies into more agile and efficient global enterprises. An important lesson from the efforts in computer-integrated manufacturing and other businesses has been that enterpriseslike any other system - need to be properly designed and that methods to do this should become widely available and publicised. Architectures for Enterprise Integration describes the latest methods to guide enterprises and consultants, managers and technical personnel through a complete life-cycle of enterprise development. This book is based on the findings of the IFIP/IFAC Task Force and presents a state-of-the-art review of enterprise architecture, including analysis and comparison of the three major architectural frameworks and methodologies; identification of the strengths and weaknesses of each methodology to enable users to select the approach which best suits their needs; a roadmap for the development of more complete methodologies by using existing ones. This book is essential reading for all practising engineers and researchers in manufacturing and engineering management and will be of special interest to those involved in CIM and enterprise modelling and integration.

This book is intended to address both the quantitative and qualitative issues of programmable controllers for factory automation. It is helpful for both the newcomer to the field and the experienced control engineer requiring a fresh perspective.

The use of coal is required to help satisfy the world's energy needs. Yet coal is a difficult fossil fuel to consume efficiently and cleanly. We believe that its clean and efficient use can be increased through improved technology based on a thorough understanding of fundamental physical and chemical processes that occur during consumption. The principal objective of this book is to provide a current summary of this technology. The past technology for describing and analyzing coal furnaces and combus tors has relied largely on empirical inputs for the complex flow and chemical reactions that occur while more formally treating the heat-transfer effects. GrOWing concern over control of combustion-generated air pollutants revealed a lack of understanding of the relevant fundamental physical and chemical mechanisms. Recent technical advances in computer speed and storage capacity, and in numerical prediction of recirculating turbulent flows, two-phase flows, and flows with chemical reaction have opened new opportunities for describing and modeling such complex combustion systems in greater detail. We believe that most of the requisite component models to permit a more fundamental description of coal combustion processes are available. At the same time there is worldwide interest in the use of coal, and progress in modeling of coal reaction processes has been steady."

This is a state-of-the-art guide to SMT with fine pitch components intended for professionals in electronics manufacturing. The overriding objective is to equip manufacturing people in the electronics industry with a better understanding of the manufacturing processes involved.