Neal P. Juster – författare

This book will be the first proceedings of a series of symposia on the exchange of best practices and research in engineering design and manufacture organized focusing on Europe and Asia by a group of researchers from European and Asian Universities working on several EU funded projects. This very first book will explore the difference and communalities of European and Asian research and practice in this very important field. With the rapid economic expansion of Asia and the gradual shift of manufacturing from Europe and the USA to Asia, this Symposium will provide a timely forum for leading researchers in the field to exchange their research findings and experience. The book covers this first symposium, and aims to give insights to these on-going changes, show stheir implications from design and manufacture perspective for both Europe and Asia and identifies new research topics to improve industrial practice. The primary audience of this book are researchers in the field of engineering design and manufacture, industrialists and business persons who are interested in finding out the state of design and manufacture in Asia and Europe.

With collaborative product development in a geographically distributed environment and global outsourcing becoming normal for many companies, it is imperative to bring academics, researchers and industrialists together to share research ideas and best practice. The European-Asia Symposium on Engineering Design and Manufacture (EASED 2004) provides such a platform and aims to increase the exchange of ideas and best practice among practitioners and researchers from two major global regions - Europe and Asia. As the manufacturing activities, associated with the design activities in European, American and Japan, are being transferred to Asia, it is timely to organise this International Symposium. The Symposium brings together research experts and industrialists to focus on the issues related to these global changes. This geographical distribution of tasks involved in the whole engineering product realisation process brings great challenge as well as huge benefits. This Symposium provides a platform for academic researchers and industrial practitioners to exchange ideas used to address the challenges presented by this new global economic development. This book presents 75 papers from 185 accepted refereed papers presented at EASED2004.