Production Engineering: The Competitive Edge describes the applications of advanced manufacturing technologies and their environmental impact. This book contains four chapters that explore particularly the implementation of high-performance integrated system in production engineering. The first chapter deals with the association between product design, market, and manufacturing requirements, followed by a review of production management and economic and human oriented operation of production systems. The second chapter tackles the principles of the so-called "Intelligent Technologies, the potential of material-adapted machines, and environmental responsibility of manufacturing technologies. The third chapter highlights the design and realization of manufacturing equipment. This chapter also looks into the problem of interfacing in material flow in integrated systems, the concept of shop floor techniques, and the reduction of initial operation and standstill times of complex manufacturing machines. The fourth chapter considers quality assurance methods, including quality control loops, network, and optoelectronic measurements. This book will prove useful to workers in the fields of development, engineering design, operations scheduling, manufacturing, assembly, quality assurance, personnel management, and accounting departments.
