"Collaborative Product and Service Life Cycle Management for a Sustainable World" gathers together papers from the 15th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering (CE2008), to stimulate the new thinking that is so crucial to our sustained productivity enhancement and quality of life. It is already evident in this new century that the desire for sustainable development is increasingly driving the market to reach for new and innovative solutions that more effectively utilize the resources we have inherited from previous generations; with the obvious responsibility to future generations. Human productivity and progress can be positively engineered and managed in harmony with the provision and needs of our natural environment. One century on from the industrial revolution, this is now the time of the sustainable revolution; requiring holistic technological, process and people integrated solutions to sustained socio-economic enhancement.

This volume features the proceedings of the 14th ISPE Conference on Concurrent Engineering, held in Sao Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo, Brazil, on the 16th - 20th of July 2007. It highlights the application of concurrent engineering to the development of complex systems.

The recognized requirement for advancements in Concurrent Engineering for sustainable productivity enhancement (improved quality of life) can be viewed positively. The basic aim of productivity enhancement is changing, from primarily seeking collaborative enterprise engineered solutions through a more restricted short-term market view. Rather, it is looking forward to a more expansive truly concurrent engineering approach to development that must be adopted in order to synthesize all of the far-reaching requirements and implications relating to products and their intended operation, service provision and end-of-life. It is already evident in this new century that the desire for sustainable development is increasingly driving the market to reach for new and innovative solutions that more effectively utilize the resources we have inherited from previous generations; with the obvious responsibility to future generations.

There is a need to rethink the way in which we make things in order to revise the a ~cradle to gravea (TM) philosophy of the industrial revolution, which can be viewed as an extreme relative to naturea (TM)s principle of sustainable evolution. Human productivity and progress can be positively engineered and managed in harmony with the provision and needs of our natural environment. One century on from the industrial revolution, this is now the time of the sustainable revolution; requiring holistic technological, process and people integrated solutions to sustained socio-economic enhancement. It might surprise Albert Einstein that he rather well encapsulated the nature of this a ~evolutionary strugglea (TM) when he stated: "The world will not evolve past itscurrent state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation."

Collaborative Product and Service Life Cycle Management for a Sustainable World gathers together papers from the 15th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering (CE2008), to stimulate the new thinking that is so crucial to our sustained productivity enhancement and quality of life.

Concurrent engineering is well-established as an approach to engineer product parts. However, the concept has much broader application. Complex Systems Concurrent Engineering: Collaboration, Technology Innovation and Sustainability demonstrates how concurrent engineering can be used to benefit the development of complex systems, to produce results that sustain balanced stakeholder satisfaction over time. Gathered from the 14th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering, the collected papers cover all aspects of the sustainable and integrated development of complex systems, such as airplanes, satellites, space vehicles, automobiles and ships. Complex Systems Concurrent Engineering: Collaboration, Technology Innovation and Sustainability focuses on five major areas: Knowledge and collaboration engineering and management; Systems engineering, analysis, modelling, simulation and optimisation (including value, cost, risk, and schedule issues); Product realisation processes, methods, technologies and techniques; Business, management and organisation issues (product life cycle processes other than development and manufacturing); and Information modelling, technology and systems.

Traditional Systems Engineering (SE) has flourished since the United States first entered the space race and developed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. In ensuing decades more complex systems and/or systems-of-systems have resulted from continuous advancements in the technological world. Industry has been challenged by the constantly evolving needs for managing the growing number of systems and interfaces. Advances in Systems Engineering helps to address these challenges by shedding light upon modern systems engineering thought processes and paradigms. Its purpose is to explore research and development advances that are at the forefront of systems engineering.