Editorial

Welcome to the FAIM 2008 special issue of the International Journal of Sustainable Engineering. FAIM 2008 was the 18th International Conference on Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing, held at the University of Skövde, Sweden. It continued a rich tradition initiated in 1991 in Limerick by Professors William G. Sullivan and Munir Ahmad, then under the name Factory Automation and Information Management.

FAIM 2008 attracted 180 delegates from 24 countries and not less than 173 papers, resulting from over 300 abstracts, were published and presented. Over recent years, environmental and sustainable engineering and associated engineering education has become a topic of major importance at FAIM conferences, and we are very happy and proud that we can now present a FAIM special issue of IJSE.

A total of seven conference papers covering various aspects of sustainable engineering were finally accepted for this special issue. The first paper was presented as a keynote speech at the conference and gives an overview of drivers, barriers and challenges in product recovery and recycling. The other papers discuss various specific aspects of sustainable engineering such as: decision making in remanufacture; simulation methodology for the reuse of printed circuit board components; simulation for a more sustainable production system; a generic energy consumption model for decision making and energy efficiency; new trends in reducing environmental costs in the Czech Republic; and the education of engineers for environmental sustainability.

We would like to express our gratitude to Shahin Rahimifard and Allen Clegg for giving us the opportunity to publish these papers in a special issue of the International Journal of Sustainable Engineering. We also appreciate this as a token of recognition for the growing importance of sustainable engineering as a FAIM conference topic.

Guest Editors

Professor Leo J. De Vin and Dr Amos H.C. Ng

Virtual Systems Research Centre & Centre for   Intelligent Automation,

University of Skövde,

Box 408, 541 28 Skövde,

Sweden

Email: [email protected]

Email: [email protected]