Knowledge Enterprise: Intelligent Strategies in Product Design, Manufacturing, and Management

PROLAMAT (PROgraming LAnguages for MAchine Tools) is a series of international conferences devoted to the filed of manufacturing - 1969 Roma, Italy; 1973, Budapest, Hungary; 1976, Stirling, Scotland; 1979 Ann Arbor, USA; 1982 Leningrad, USSR; 1992 Tokyo, Japan; 1995 Berlin, Germany; 1998, Trento, Italy; 2001, Budapest, Hungary; - organized by IFIP the International Federation for Information Processing. This triennial event has been a basic meeting for academic and industrial experts in manufacturing. Recently not only the original topics, but all other aspects of the computerized design and production of products and production systems from traditional to virtual ones have been covered and dealt with, including life-cycle issues. This volume contains the edited version of the technical presentations of PROLMAT 2006, the IFIP TC5 international conference held on June 15-17, 2006 at the Shanghai University in China. The main theme of this conference is "Knowledge Enterprise". These proceedings focus on the issue of how to translate data and information into knowledge in manufacturing enterprises. Profitability is no longer only a function of price, cost, and adequate quality.