This book explores knowledge and skill chains in engineering and manufacturing in the age of global communications. Information infrastructure involves a range of activities from product planning, engineering, and manufacturing trough transportation, marketing, and repair/upgrade to returns and recycling/disposal. Distinct from the traditional engineering database, life-cycle support information has its own characteristic requirements, -- flexible extensibility, distributed architecture, multiple viewpoints, long-time archiving, and product usage information. Several authors address the architecture of the information infrastructure, its services and its requirements. Other papers focus on the knowledge and skill chains that develop in a variety of situations: the supply chain, the factory floor, the man-system interaction, etc. For each of these, state-of-the-art and state-of-research scenarios for various industrial sectors address both engineering and operations requirements in the current socio-economic environment.

Enhancing Knowledge and Skill Chains in Manufacturing and Engineering.- Enhancing Knowledge and Skill Chains in Manufacturing and Engineering.- Generic Infrastructure Requirements and Components.- Engineering Information Infrastructure for Product Lifecycle Managment.- Architecting an Ubiquitous & Model Driven Information Infrastructure.- Service Modeling for Service Engineering.- The Extended Products Paradigm, An Introduction.- Process Plant Information Integration in Three Dimensions.- Using Contexts in Managing Product Knowledge.- Object-Oriented Design Pattern Approach to Seamless Modeling, Simulation and Implementation of Distributed Control Systems.- An Interoperability Framework and Capability Profiling for Manufacturing Software.- IT-Supported Modeling, Analysis and Design of Supply Chains.- Multi-Strata Modeling in MCM and CLM for Collaborative Engineering.- Ontological Stratification in an Ecology of Infohabitants.- Logics of Becoming in Scheduling.- Communication in the Digital City and Artifact Lives.- Validating MEDIQUAL Constructs.- External Collaboration.- Distributed Engineering Environment for Inter-Enterprise Collaboration.- Agent Based Manufacturing Capability Assessment in the Extended Enterprise Using Step AP224 and XML.- Inter-Enterprise Planning of Manufacturing Systems Applying Simulation with IPR Protection.- A Study on Support System for Distributed Simulation System of Manufacturing Systems Using HLA.- Method and Tool for Design Process Navigation and Automatic Generation of Simulation Models for Manufacturing Systems.- Knowledge Management in BID Preparation for Global Engineering and Manufacturing Projects.- Supply Chain Engineering and the Use of a Supporting Knowledge Management Application.- A Planning Framework for the Deployment of Innovative Information and Communication Technologies in Procurement.- Supreme: Supply Chain Integration by Reconfigurable Modules.- Tools and Methods for Risk Management in Multi-Site Engineering Projects.- Development of an After-Sales Support Inter-Enterprise Collaboration System Using Information Technologies.- Collaborative Service in Global Manufacturing - a New Paradigm.- Remote Maintenance Support in Virtual Service Enterprises.- Factory Floor Infrastructure.- Intelligent Process Planning and Control Framework for the Internet.- Implementation of a Data Gathering System with Scalable Intelligent Control Architecture.- Creation of Feature Sets for Developing Integrated Process Planning System.- Proposal of Modification Strategy of NC Program in the Virtual Manufacturing Environment.- Dynamic Co-Operative Scheduling Based on HLA.- A Study on Data Handling Mechanism of a Distributed Virtual Factory.- A Study on Real-Time Scheduling Methods in Holonic Manufacturing Systems.- Sensitivity Analysis of Critical Path and Its Visualization in Job Shop Scheduling.- Enterprise Integration of Management and Automation in a Refinery.- Man-System Collaboration.- CAI System with Multi-Media Text Through Web Browser for NC Lathe Programming.- Web Based Operation Instruction System Using Wearable Computer.- Model-Based Description of Human Body Motions for Ergonomics Evaluation.- Model-Based Motion Analysis of Factory Workers Using Multi-Perspective Video Cameras.- Human Factor and its Identification in Manufacturing Prediction.