Proceedings Of The Twenty Ninth International Matador Conference

This volume comprises the Proceedings of the Tenth National Conference on Manufacturing Research held at the University of Technology, Loughborough, UK, in September 1994, the latest in a series of meetings first convened in 1985, and the first to be published by Taylor & Francis Ltd.; Keith Case and Steven Newman, the Conference Chairs, the book contains R. H. Weston's keynote address, "Requirements and Trends in Manufacturing Systems", and over 140 contributions, which together represent the leading edge, state-of-the-art knowledge in the area of manufacturing and production engineering and management. The contributions are organized by theme: process planning; systems integration and modelling; simulation and scheduling; concurrent engineering and design; process control; and inspection; and thus demonstrate the enormous range of topics that manufacturing research embraces and their relevance to improving current industrial practice.

Presented here are 73 refereed papers given at the 34th MATADOR Conference held at UMIST in July 2004. The MATADOR series of conferences covers the topics of Manufacturing Automation and Systems Technology, Applications, Design, Organisation and Management, and Research. The 34th proceedings contains original papers contributed by researchers from many countries on different continents. The papers cover both the technological aspect of manufacturing processes; and the systems, business and management features of manufacturing enterprise. The papers in this volume reflect: - the importance of manufacturing to international wealth creation; - the necessity of responsiveness and agility of manufacturing companies to meet market-led requirements and international change; - the role of information technology and electronic communications in the growth of global manufacturing enterprises; - the impact of new technologies, new materials and processes, on the ability to produce goods of higher quality, more quickly, to meet markets needs at a lower cost. Some of the major generic developments which have taken place in these areas since the 33rd MATADOR conference was held in 2000 are reported in this volume.