Balanced Automation Systems for Future Manufacturing Networks

Book excerpt: Manufacturing and operations management paradigms are evolving toward more open and resilient spaces where innovation is driven not only by ever-changing customer needs but also by agile and fast-reacting networked structures. Flexibility, adaptability and responsiveness are properties that the next generation of systems must have in order to successfully support such new emerging trends. Customers are being attracted to be involved in Co-innovation Networks, as - proved responsiveness and agility is expected from industry ecosystems. Renewed production systems needs to be modeled, engineered and deployed in order to achieve cost-effective solutions. BASYS conferences have been developed and organized as a forum in which to share visions and research findings for innovative sustainable and knowledge-based products-services and manufacturing models. Thus, the focus of BASYS is to discuss how human actors, emergent technologies and even organizations are integrated in order to redefine the way in which the val- creation process must be conceived and realized. BASYS 2010, which was held in Valencia, Spain, proposed new approaches in automation where synergies between people, systems and organizations need to be fully exploited in order to create high added-value products and services. This book contains the selection of the papers which were accepted for presentation at the BASYS 2010 conference, covering consolidated and emerging topics of the conference scope.