This book contains selected papers from International Symposium for Production Research 2021, held on October 7–9, 2021, online, Turkey. The book reports recent advances in production engineering and operations. It explores topics including production research; production management; operations management; industry 4.0; industrial engineering; mechanical engineering; engineering management; and operational research. Presenting real-life applications, case studies, and mathematical models, this book is of interest to researchers, academics, and practitioners in the field of production and operation engineering. It provides both the results of recent research and practical solutions to real-world problems.

On the one side, Industrial competitiveness today means shorter product lifecycles, increased product variety, and shorter times to market and customized tangible products and services. To face these challenges, the manufacturing industry is forced to move from traditional management, control, and automation approaches towards industrial cyber-physical systems. On the other side, several emergent engineering approaches and related Information‐Communication‐Control‐Technologies, such as Multi‐Agent-Systems, Service‐Oriented Architecture, Plug‐and‐Produce Systems, Cloud and Fog Technologies, Big Data and Analytics, among others, have been researched during the last years. The confluence of those results with the latest developments in Industrial Digitalization, Systems‐of‐Cyber-Physical-Systems Engineering, Internet‐of‐Things, Internet‐of‐Services, and Industry 4.0 is opening a new broad spectrum of innovation possibilities. The PERFoRM (Production-harmonizEd-Reconfiguration of Flexible Robots and Machinery) approach is one of them. It teaches the reader what it means when production machines and systems are digitalized and migrated into Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems and what happens when they are networked and start collaborating with each other and with the human, using the internet. After a Technology Trend Screening and beyond a comprehensive state-of-the-art analysis about Industrial Digitalization and Industry 4.0-compliant solutions, the book introduces methods, architectures, and technologies applicable in real industrial use cases, explained for a broad audience of researchers, practitioners, and industrialists.

The purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the new industrial revolution: the "Industry 4.0." Globalization and competitiveness are forcing companies to review and improve their production processes. Industry 4.0 is a revolution that involves many different sectors and is still evolving. It represents the integration of tools already used in the past (big data, cloud, robot, 3D printing, simulation, etc.) that are now connected to a smart network by transmitting digital data at high speeds. The implementation of a 4.0 system represents a huge change for companies, which are faced with big investments. The idea of the book is to present practices, challenges, and opportunities related to the Industry 4.0. This book is intended to be a useful resource for anyone who deals with this issue.

This book contains contemporary discussions on technology, business models, and the adoption of digital manufacturing systems. The book's initial chapters cover technological details underpinning the digital manufacturing systems, for example, cyber-physical systems and digital twins. Next, the book discusses how organizations modify their business models using concepts such as servitization and platforms to leverage digital manufacturing. The latter chapters focus on how a country's unique economic and infrastructural context influences digital manufacturing adoption in terms of technology and business models and frameworks to evaluate readiness for digital manufacturing. With perspectives from different continents, the book appeals to academic researchers and industry alike.

Using digital technologies can support the flow and use of digital information in a timelier manner both within and between production systems. Smart manufacturing systems use these enabling technologies to maximize the capabilities cost, delivery, flexibility, and quality. The focus in industry so far has mainly been on the technologies and systems, but to succeed in digitalization, it is vital to understand how the technologies can be put into practice to meet the needs of an industrial organization. The focus of this article is to demonstrate how digital technologies can be used to enable data from production systems to inform decisions and generate value for an organization. This article showcases this with examples from real-world industrial cases, and the technologies used are 3-D laser scanning and 5G communication. The 3-D laser scanning is used to collect spatial data to build a virtual representation of a factory, and 5G is utilized to collect machine data from various data sources, e.g., the machine computer and external sensors. The results show that available data can support multiple roles in the organization and throughout the different phases of a production system. The status of the machine can be monitored in real time, a design can be evaluated against a system's behavior, an organization can learn from the data transformed into information, and the virtual representation provides a very accurate and photorealistic representation of a system as-is. Digital technologies can enable more data representing the system and support the organization in knowing more about their processes when used in the right way.

The manufacturing industry will reap significant benefits from encouraging the development of digital manufacturing science and technology. Digital Manufacturing Science uses theorems, illustrations and tables to introduce the definition, theory architecture, main content, and key technologies of digital manufacturing science. Readers will be able to develop an in-depth understanding of the emergence and the development, the theoretical background, and the techniques and methods of digital manufacturing science. Furthermore, they will also be able to use the basic theories and key technologies described in Digital Manufacturing Science to solve practical engineering problems in modern manufacturing processes. Digital Manufacturing Science is aimed at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, academic researchers and researchers in the manufacturing industry. It allows readers to integrate the theories and technologies described with their own research works, and to propose new ideas and new methods to improve the theory and application of digital manufacturing science.

The world progresses toward Industry 4.0, and manufacturers are challenged to successfully navigate this unique digital journey. To some, digitalization is a golden opportunity; to others, it is a necessary evil. But to optimist and pessimist alike, there is a widespread puzzlement over the practical details of digitalization. To many manufacturers, digital transformation is a vague and confusing concept they nevertheless must grapple with in order to survive the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The proliferation of digital manufacturing technologies adds to the confusion, leaving many manufacturers perplexed and unprepared, with little real insight into how emerging technologies can help them sustain a competitive edge in their markets. This book effectively conveys Siemens's knowledge and experience through a concept called "Smart Digital Manufacturing," a stepwise approach to realizing the promise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Smart Digital Manufacturing roadmap provides guidance and enables low-risk, high-reward adoption of new manufacturing software technologies through a series of tipping-point investment decisions that result in optimized manufacturing performance. The book provides readers with a clear understanding of what digital technology has to offer them, and how and when to invest in these essential components of tomorrow?s factories. René Wolf is Senior Vice President of Manufacturing Operations Management Software for Siemens Digital Industries Software, a business unit of the Siemens Digital Factory Division. Raffaello Lepratti is Vice President of Business Development and Marketing for Siemens Digital Industries Software.