While development has been the foremost agenda before successive governments in India, it has been viewed narrowly - from the perspective of economic development and particularly in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). This book questions such an approach. It breaks from the conventional wisdom of GDP growth as being a definitive measure of the success of a country's policies and offers an alternative development philosophy. The author contends that people's economic and social welfare, life satisfaction, self-fulfilment and happiness should be treated as indicators of real development. The book underlines that in a successful model of development, the country's economic policies will have to synergize with its cultural ethos and that the objective of development should be gross national happiness and well-being of the people. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of development studies, economics, public policy and administration, governance, political science and sociology, as well as to policymakers.

The complete shop floor automation - a "lights out factory," where workers initially set up all machines, turn off the lights, lock the door and the machine churns up the parts - remains an unfulfilled dream. Yet when we look at the enormity of the process of automation and integration even for the most simply conceived part factory, we can recognize that automation has been applied and is being applied, more so when it made sense from a cost/benefit standpoint. It is our nature to be dissatisfied with near term progress, but when we realize how short a time the tools to do that automation have been available, the progress is clearly noteworthy - considering the multitudes of factors and the environment we have to deal with. Most of the automa tion problems we confront in today's environment are multidisciplinary in nature. They require not just the knowledge and experience in various distinct fields but good cooperation from different disci plined organizations to adequately comprehend and solve such problems. In Volume III we have many examples that reflect the current state of the art techniques of robotics and plant automation. The papers for Volume III have been arranged in a logical order of automation planning, automated assembly, robot programming and simula tion, control, motion coordination, communication and networking to factories of the future."

This volume is about automation - automation in design, automation in manufacturing, and automation in production. Automation is essen tial for increased productivity of quality products at reduced costs. That even partial or piecemeal automation of a production facility can deliver dramatic improvements in productivity has been amply demon strated in many a real-life situation. Hence, currently, great ef forts are being devoted to research and development of general as well special methodologies of and tools for automation. This volume re ports on some of these methodologies and tools. In general terms, methodologies for automation can be divided into two groups. There are situations where a process, whether open-loop or closed-loop, is fairly clearly understood. In such a situation, it is possible to create a mathematical model and to prescribe a mathe matical procedure to optimize the output. If such mathematical models and procedures are computationally tractable, we call the correspond ing automation - algorithmic or parametric programming. There is, however, a second set of situations which include process es that are not well understood and the available mathematical models are only approximate and discrete. While there are others for which mathematical procedures are so complex and disjoint that they are computationally intractable. These are the situations for which heuristics are quite suitable for automation. We choose to call such automation, knowledge-based automation or heuristic programming."

The total integration of the process of designing, manufacturing, and supporting a product from the earliest conceptual phase to the time it is removed from service remains an unfulfilled dream. Yet, when we look at the enormity of the process of integration even for the most simply conceived and manufactured items, we can recognize that substantial progress has been and is being made. It is our nature to be dissatisfied with near term progress, but when we realize how short a time the tools to do that integration have been available, the progress is clearly noteworthy - considering the multitudes of subjects we have to deal with. Most of the integration problems we confront today are multidisciplinary in nature. They require not only the knowledge and experience in a variety of fields but also good cooperation from different disciplined organizations to adequately comprehend and solve such problems. In Volume I we have many examples that reflect the current state of the art in integration of engineer ing and production processes. The papers for Volume I have been arranged in a more or less logical order of conceptual. design, computer-based modeling, analysis, production, and manufacturing. Chapter I is devoted to those with a design and geometrie modeling emphasis; Chapter II is devoted to an engineering analysis emphasis; and Chapter III to a production/manufacturing emphasis."