New trends in manufacturing processes research

Abstract

Research on manufacturing processes is further enriched and becomes stronger at the 47th North American Manufacturing Research Conference (NAMRC 47) at Penn State University, The Behrend College, Erie, Pennsylvania USA. Innovation is fundamentally connected to products or processes: the former being rarer and more difficult to be obtained, the latter is definitively related to economy, competitiveness and welfare of a nation. Furthermore, the research and success in innovation of processes permit also the proposition of innovative products. Manufacturing processes engineering is of primary interest for industries and new challenges are faced every day in order to reduce costs, increase complexity or functionality or simply quality of parts and products. Finally new and effective technologies and manufacturing processes are proposed or integrated to the existing