Economic development and wealth through globally competitive manufacturing systems

The need for sustainable economic development is currently observed in many regions in the world and highlights the important role that manufacturing activities can play for societies, contributing to their development, generating wealth, jobs and a better quality of life.

Although there is potential for manufacturing to contribute to a country’s GDP, to be effective manufacturing companies have to be able to act in today’s competitive, complex and globalised world, incrementing their efficiency, exploring effectively the new technologies and implementing new methods and tools. In general, manufacturing companies have to be able to evolve their production systems, with the aim to be able to design their products and the supply chains, and to adapt their activities to deliver their products and satisfy the customer needs, in markets where they are strategically focusing their operations. These movements and dynamics that have been observed are contributing to increment the level of industrialisation, modernising the production methods and enhancing the technological capabilities in many countries/regions in the world where manufacturing activities were not so expressive.

The manufacturing activities should be incremented with the evolvement of technological and organisational manufacturing dimensions which is each time more supported in well-defined strategies where the techno-scientific knowledge is a key issue. Therefore, the developed economies or the existence of well-established knowledge-based societies pose the greatest advantage for a sustainable development of manufacturing activities. This development can be achieved through manufacturing companies that are able to compete in terms of more high-value-added products and services, as an alternative to those with a purely cost-based competition, which is not compatible with the goal of maintaining the region’s social and sustainability standards.

The need for changes in manufacturing activities, evolving its processes and enriching its value-added creation, will have a clear social impact, valuing knowledge and new competencies, and has been calling for a cooperative effort in terms of R&D and education activities. Thus, R&D and education institutions are being fostered to contribute with their knowledge and capacity for innovation to promote increased high-value manufacturing. It is from these cooperative efforts that will emerge new technological developments and innovations, with increments in competitiveness of some traditional industrial sectors. Thus launching and attracting certain regions to high-value manufacturing and strengthening the collaboration between fundamental actors, such as universities, research centres and industry. All this cooperation that is already happening is not only in regions where those actors are placed but involving actors from other regions or different countries, with each nation looking forward to improve human realisation and wealth, through higher skilled and more well-paid jobs creation.

It is with these worldwide perspective of sustainable economic development that CIRP, ‘The International Academy for Production Engineering’ (http://www.cirp.net), as the world leading organisation in production engineering research, has being promoting the cooperation within a community of actors from industry, academic and research. With its series of Conferences on Manufacturing Systems that are running for 50 years, CIRP has an international forum of researchers and industrialists, from all over the world, that offers the opportunity to all the participants to be actively involved in technical and scientific discussions on the manufacturing systems’ trends and their contribution for worldwide sustainability and development of manufacturing companies and of societies.

It was with the goal to review and discuss the advances, research results and other improvements in the area of manufacturing, taking different perspectives and innovative approaches and envisioning future trends, that was held in May 2013, in Setúbal, Portugal, the 46th CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems (CIRP CMS2013).

The CIRP CMS2013 conference had the theme of Economic Development and Wealth through Globally Competitive Manufacturing Systems and it was an opportunity for us to provide an international platform for the exchange of the latest ideas and developments on manufacturing systems, to stimulate technical and scientific discussions on manufacturing systems and their implications to productivity growth and industrial competitiveness, to stimulate the development of new research themes and international networking, to bring the discussion of forefront subjects closer to the local industrial engineers and managers, and to promote the development of collaborative networks to support manufacturing systems improvement and their global competitiveness. The overall aim of the conference was to contribute to higher value creation through an effective use of research results in the area of manufacturing systems to improve industrial practices.

In the CIRP CMS2013 conference, 116 technical papers were presented and there were more than 171 delegates from 26 different countries. The papers’ contents and discussions covered a wide variety of research topics such as Supply Chain and Global production management, Production networks, intelligent, adaptive and e-manufacturing, digital manufacturing, factory and production planning, design and application of production systems, flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing systems/agile manufacturing, sustainable production, recycling and remanufacturing, energy-efficient processes and systems, process modelling and process planning, simulation and optimisation of manufacturing systems, micro-manufacturing, nano-manufacturing, novel processes and machinery, life cycle management, concurrent engineering, industrial product service systems (IPS2), production systems evolutions (SPECIES), quality and maintenance management, knowledge and data management in production and logistics, beyond lean and education in learning factories. As a synthesis, in many of the presentations, provided by keynote speakers, researchers and industrialists, there was a clear need for an effective use of research results in contributing to higher value creation in the area of manufacturing systems.

In this Special Edition of International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing is presented enhanced versions of themes selected from papers accepted and presented at the CIRP CMS2013. These themes showed that for the manufacturing company’s competitiveness, the key issues to be met are the knowledge development and application, in aspects of the manufacturing systems such as the concurrent product and supply chain design, the performance analysis and management of manufacturing systems, the process planning for an effective use of manufacturing resources, the systems’ reconfigurabilty, the economic challenges related with the efficient use of energy in industry, and the competencies development in all hierarchy levels for a fast adaptation and evolution of production systems. The content of the papers is enriched with industrial case studies or with the presentation of research outcomes validated in a real context.

The Editors of this special issue would like to formally thank all those who aid and support, in any way, in the preparation of this special issue, as well as, the preparation and delivery of CIRP CMS2013.

Specially we would like to pay a tribute to Professor Kanji Ueda, Co-Chair of CMS2013, who passed away in November, 2015, for his enormous contribution made to the scientific and industrial community, in the field of production engineering, and for his work, throughout the last decades, promoting, with all his prestigious, vision and wisdom, the CIRP series of Conferences on Manufacturing Systems as one of the most recognised worldwide conference in the field of manufacturing,

We would like especially to acknowledge the contribution of authors who, participating in the 46th CIRP conference on Manufacturing Systems with the submission of such high-quality papers, accepted the invitation to consider a new and significantly expanded versions of their papers to be presented in this special issue. We would like to also thank the major contribution of our reviewers, whose valuable comments improved the quality of papers and consequently enhanced the technical and scientific quality of the present special edition of International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing.

We are deeply grateful to the sponsors of CIRP CMS2013, in particular Bosch Termotecnologia SA, SAGE Portugal and Volkswagen Autoeuropa, whose support and contributions were essential for the success of the conference and the outcomes obtained, especially the present special edition of International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing.