xiv box for Balanced Automation, research in this area is still young and emerging. In our opinion, the development of hybrid balanced solutions to cope with a variety of automation levels and manual approaches, is a much more challenging research problem than the search for a purely automatic solution. Various research activities described in this book illustrate some of these challenges through the development proposals, assisting tools, and initial results. In certain chapters however, the balancing aspects are not yet achieved in the research area, but their inclusion in this book is intended to give a broader and more comprehensive perspective of the multiple areas involved. One important aspect to be noticed is the extension and application of the concept of balanced automation to all areas of the manufacturing enterprise. Clearly, the need for a "balanced" approach is not restricted to the shop floor components, rather it applies to all other areas, as illustrated by the wide spectrum of research contributions found in this book. For instance, the need for an appropriate integration of multiple systems and their perspectives is particularly important for the implantation of virtual enterprises. Although both the BASYS'95 and the BASYS'96 conferences have provided important contributions, approaches, and tools for the implantation of balanced automation systems, there are a number of areas that require further research: .

Inhalt
1 Reengineering manufacturing processes for agility.- 2 Anthropocentric production systems: socio-technological innovations.- 3 Antecedents of BPR success in manufacturing firms.- 4 A framework for strategic performance measurement.- 5 Domots are coming! or How to manage building automation in a blanced way?.- 6 Supervisory control of integrated building systems: a balanced approach.- 7 Multipurpose layout planner for cutting stock problems: implementation issues.- 8 Analytic process of state and linear combined priority.- 9 A simple method for surface interpolation by means of spline functions.- 10 Data integration: a federated approach with data exchanges.- 11 Information management for intelligent supervision of hybrid process control.- 12 The RoadRobot project: from theory to practice in systems integration.- 13 The role of discrete event simulation in the improvement of manufacturing systems performance.- 14 Performance measurement at 2D-CAD systems.- 15 An approach to knowledge representation andperformance measurement for a quality engineering system.- 16 Modeling and performance evaluation of production lines using a modeling language MOSEL.- 17 Distributed industrial information systems: design and experience.- 18 Integration of manufacturing applications: overcoming heterogeneity to preserve investment.- 19 Integrated information system based on industrial standard protocols.- 20 A manufacturing cell integration solution.- 21 Individual product management for FMS control: a step to mobile database nodes integration.- 22 A data structure for a generic design model.- 23 Vision survey system, a tool for providing 3D product definition data of large construction.- 24 Balanced intelligent process control systems.- 25 Process condition monitoring a novel conceptfor manufacturing management tool integration.- 26 Application prototype development, test and integration of shop-floor management applications.- 27 A generic control system for transparent legacy system migration.- 28 Measuring manufacturing flexibility a resource-elements based approach.- 29 Layout of an existing production unit by the factorized graph method.- 30 Introduction of robot technology in a small enterprise.- 31 Multi-agent decision making architecture and distributed control.- 32 Negotiation between economincally motivated agents.- 33 A communication architecture for multi-agent applications in FMS/FAS.- 34 Towards an intelligent system for FMS design.- 35 Information support of FMS configuration design.- 36 The development of a robotic assembly cell during ESPRIT Project 5629.- 37 Towards a knowledge-based fixture designer's assistant.- 38 Co-ordination functions in a SME network.- 39 Virtual enterprise/OPIM concepts: an institutionalization framework.- 40 The Extended Enterprise reference framework.- 41 Towards agile scheduling in extended enterprise.- 42 Communication and control modeling for collaborative engineering.- 43 Architecture of an integrated process planning and tool management system.- 44 A feature-based model for part representation in a DFM environment.- 45 Multi-modeling of an industrial application with DFD, E-R and object-oriented methods.- 46 Integrated management of hypermedia technical information based on an express analysis.- 47 Structured model representation of manufacturing process using petri nets and knowledge based tools.- 48 Technology and human skills in manufacturing.- 49 An anthropocentric approach to developing modern simulation-based decision support tools.- 50 Issues in techno-organisational development methodsfor complex manufacturing environments.- 51 University enterprises cooperation via incubation process.- 52 Coordination control of discrete event systems using petri nets.- 53 Programming strategies and concepts for a CIM system.- Index of contributors.- Keyword index.