The future of Manufacturing Industries and the development of the related service sectors of the economy depend on innovation for the rapid development of new products and services. The actual competitiveness between economies and the mobility of capital and resources, advance these dynamic needs at a global scale. The rapid growth of large Asian economies, such as the Chinese and Indian economies, the incorporation of Eastern European countries into the European Union and the development of new production capabilities and consumer markets in many other parts of the world are only examples of a considerable and sustained change that has occurred during the past ten years and had a direct impact on manufacturing industry and the associated services. Therefore, sustaining innovation and the rapid development of new products and services are key elements for ensuring the competitiveness of manufacturing companies in a global context.
Digital engineering methods are of paramount importance as they accelerate key technical and business functions and structure the collaborative procedures, from a local to a global base. New product design and engineering systems are being continuously developed to include a variety of tools for DfX as well as to incorporate aspects of digital manufacturing. Product Data Management and Product Lifecycle Management systems are nowadays seamlessly integrated with product design systems, integrating connectivity and management of the global design, production and service processes throughout the product's lifecycle.
There is growing awareness that the competitiveness of industrial companies in today's global environment is closely related to the efficiency and performance of their production networks and the logistics of their supply chain operations. These are the key areas of relevance for the development of novel digital modelling and optimisation methods for large and complex systems and networks.
State of the art applications, such as systems integration software for product verification and validation and RFIDs, have a major impact on the way product quality can be assessed during manufacturing and assembly and on how logistic functions are executed in industry, respectively. The potential impact of such infusion of digital technologies has not yet been fully evaluated as the integration of associated systems and services is still incomplete. These are areas in which research and development efforts from the academic community should be directed to deal with the new and challenging areas of digital enterprise technology (DET). Digital Enterprise Technology has been defined by Maropoulos and Reiter as “the collection of systems and methods for the digital modelling of the global product development and realization process, in the context of lifecycle management”.
This special edition of the International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing includes enhanced versions of unprinted papers selected from the papers accepted and presented at the 3rd International, CIRP sponsored Conference in Digital Enterprise Technology (DET'06) that was held in Setúbal, Portugal, in September 2006. DET 2006 follows on from the success of the two previous meetings held in Durham, UK, and Seattle, USA, in 2002 and 2004 respectively. The principal aim of DET'06 was to provide an international forum for the exchange of scientific knowledge and industrial and educational experience regarding the integration of the various aspects of DET. In DET'06, 76 technical papers were presented and there were more than 120 delegates from 20 different countries. The importance given to the theme of Digital Enterprise Technology can be highlighted through the sponsorship given by CIRP-The International Academy for Production Engineering (www.cirp.net) to this series of conferences and through the significant number of CIRP colleagues that participated and contributed to the success of this meeting.
The papers presented in DET'06 were relevant examples of current, state-of-the-art in the development and use of systems and methods for the digital modelling of the global product development and realization processes, in the context of life cycle management. They provide valuable insights into the future trends and challenges of digital enterprise technology and make an important contribution to the definition of perspectives for developing technologies and systems to address the digital design of products, factories and networks. The paper sessions were organized according to the five technical areas of Digital Enterprise Technology namely;
Distributed and Collaborative Design | |||||
Process Modelling and Process Planning | |||||
Advanced Factory Design and Modelling | |||||
Physical-to-Digital Environment Integrators | |||||
Enterprise Integration Technologies | |||||
The scientific developments over the last few years, in terms of computer processing technology, computer graphics and communication infrastructure, allow that the first three technical areas of DET can be performed entirely in the digital domain. The relevance of the fourth area is justified with the involvement of methods for bi-directional integration of digital and physical environments in order to achieve risk mitigation at product and system levels using shop-floor based metrology and discrete event simulation respectively. The fifth area of DET includes methods that are predominantly employed to manage physical resources when these have been released for manufacturing and, as such, are used when product realization has commenced. The fifth area also includes web-centric methods for product data management that are applicable from the very early stages of product development and span the five areas of DET.
The integrated vision to the design and management of products, processes and production systems was introduced in DET'06 through a special session in Production System Evolution (SPECIES). The relevance of this theme comes from the presentation and discussion of techniques and methods devoted to determining the most appropriate evolution strategy for production systems.
The Editors of this special issue would like to formally thank all those who assisted in any way with the preparation of this special issue as well as the preparation and delivery of DET'06. We would like to name the distinguished members of CIRP, the members of the International Scientific Committee and of the Local Organising Committee as well as the Publishers of the scientific output of DET'06. In particular, sincere thanks go to Teresa Sequeira and Vera Santos from Ceni-“Centro de Integração e Inovação de Processos”, who played a major role in all aspects of paper organization and management. We are also pleased to acknowledge all the contributions from the many colleagues who participated in the meeting with the submission of outstanding papers and the great contribution of our referees, whose valuable comments enhanced the technical and scientific quality of the papers presented.
Finally, we are deeply grateful to the many sponsors of DET'06, whose financial support was essential for the success of the meeting and the outcomes obtained, especially the book published by Springer with the title “Digital Enterprise Technology: Perspectives and Future Challenges” and the present special edition of International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing.
The future of the International Conferences on Digital Enterprise Technology is well established and the next DET International Conference will be held at the Ecole Centrale de Nantes, F, during the period, 20th to 22nd October 2008.
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