Papers and reports:
IMS 99 (Workshop on Intelligent Manufacturing systems) and ICIMS-NOE, ASI'99 (EP 23447 Network of Excellence, Advanced Summer Institute), - Conference report
With 3 plenary sessions and up to six parallel sessions (with a total of 51 sessions) the 260 participants of the IMS'99 sometimes had a difficult time to make the right selections. The sessions were complemented by a poster session with 11 papers.
The 3 keynote papers addressed:
1) Technical intelligence for manufacturing (E. Westkämper),
2) From chaos to commerce: practical issues and research opportunities
in the nonlinear dynamics of decentralised manufacturing systems (H.V.D.
Parunak) and
3) Progress in IMS and future manufacturing systems (T. Moriwaki).
The first and the last keynote paper presented the latest developments in manufacturing systems and identified the directions of future R&D. High speed, high precision machining and improved process management will lead to increased enterprise performance. Component miniaturisation and increased modularisation with standardised interfaces may further im-prove the competitiveness of manufacturers. Online maintenance and increased customer service will ease the knowledge transfer and will increase the equipment manufacturers value added. The second keynote paper discussed the change in AI from problem solving and achievement goals to going concerns and maintenance goals. The introduction of multi-agent systems leads to nonlinear system behaviour and therefore requires novel techniques for system design, monitoring and control. Evolutionary programming, advanced monitoring of system trajectories and modern control techniques permitting the stabilising of chaotic systems are often even simpler than classical techniques by which agents model their environments.
The IMS'99 technical papers addressed Holonic manufacturing systems (29), Manufacturing quality assurance (3), Concurrent engineering (6), CAD/CAM (3), Virtual and extended enterprises (7), Product life-cycle modelling (4), Product and process planning (8),Manufacturing and process control (6), Human aspects in manufacturing (4) and reported on IMS specific results from the IMS working group (4), Iimb working group (6), SIMON project (17), HUMACS (5), GLOBMAN 21 (7 + exhibition of 9 industrial pilots), MASCADA project (9) and IMS general information (4). The papers provide very detailed information on the work in current IMS projects and related R&D areas. 13 projects with about 490 participants are currently active in IMS - EU 208, Japan 130, USA 59, Canada 48, Australian 29. There is an continuous call for proposals with periodic evaluation.