Special issue on digital enterprise technologies in manufacturing

The guest editors are delighted to present this special issue on Degital Enterprise Technologies in Manufacturing to international researchers and practioners in the manufacturing and related technology and service sectors. The special issue includes carefully selected papers presented at the 9^th International Conference on Digital Enterprise Technology held on 29–31 of March 2016 in Nanjing, China. Authors were invited to re-write, extend and significantly improve their papers presented at DET2016. The main aim of the conference was to provide an international forum for the exchange of leading edge scientific knowledge and industrial experiences regarding the development, integration and applications of the various aspects of digital enterprise technologies in the global manufacturing and knowledge economy era.

Digital Enterprise Technology is defined by the conference scientific committee as the collection of systems and methods for the digital modelling, simulation and optimisation of the collaborative product development, factory and manufacturing processes planning along their life cycle. The guiding idea of the conference is to find a common understanding of employing digital enterprise technologies in the factories of the future, moving from automated to flexible, digital, sustainable, smart and intelligent manufacturing.

In total, 187 delegates from 15 countries and regions attended the conference, of which 27 delegates were from multi-national companies. A total of 121 papers were accepted for presentation at the conference, of which 25 papers were selected for potential inclusion in this special issue. All selected papers had gone through the journal’s standard review process. Based on the recommendations of international reviewers, 15 papers have been finally selected by the guest editors.

The special issue starts with an overview paper written by James Gao and Andrew Nee (in addition to the 15 selected papers), which provides an introduction of the main issues and future research directions in knowledge management in the manufacturing industry with an emphasis on the sharing of manufacturing knowledge in the product development process. The 15 technical papers can be broadly grouped into the following interrelated topics:

Two papers reported research on issues related to virtual reality and human–computer interface in product design and part production design, that is, ‘Improvement of user experience using virtual reality in open-architecture product design’ authored by Song et al.; and ‘An interactive and immersive human-computer interface for rapid composite part production design’ authored by McConnell et al.

One research group reported their work on knowledge sharing frameworks for global product development and testing processes, that is, ‘A knowledge capturing and sharing framework for improving the testing processes in global product development using storytelling and video sharing’ authored by Zammit et al., and ‘A new paradigm for virtual knowledge sharing in product development based on emergent social software platforms’ authored by Evans et al. Another research group (Li et al.) reported an integrated framework for the simulation of design and computational fluid dynamics optimisation in their paper titled ‘Association of design and computational fluid dynamics simulation intent in flow control product optimization’.

In the area of manufacturing systems, three papers reported research work in cyber-physical, social and smart systems, including Internet of things and sensor technologies, that is, ‘Incorporating social sensors, cyber-physical system nodes, and smart products for personalized production in a social manufacturing environment’ authored by Ding and Jiang; ‘A resource-oriented middleware in a prototype cyber-physical manufacturing system’ authored by Liu et al.; and ‘An Internet of Things based framework to enhance just-in-time manufacturing’ authored by Xu and Chen.

Two papers reported research in metrology and inspection dealing with either large volumes or large complex surfaces in aerospace applications, that is, ‘Thermal compensation using the hybrid metrology approach compared to traditional scaling’ authored by Ross-Pinnock and Mullineux, and ‘A posture adjustment optimization method of the laser inspection device for large complex surface parts’ authored by Zhou et al.

Two papers reported the use of knowledge base and data mining technologies in robotic welding and numerical control machining, that is, ‘Optimal pass planning for robotic welding of large-dimension joints with nonuniform grooves’ authored by Yan et al., and ‘Data acquisition and data mining in the manufacturing process of computer numerical control machine tools’ authored by Wang et al.

Finally, three papers reported research in precision machining through toolpath optimisation, analysing machining errors caused by tool rotation and cutting force in numerical machining, that is, ‘A locally optimal transition method with analytical calculation of transition length for computer numerical control machining of short line segments’ authored by Du et al.; ‘Influence of tool rotation errors on flank machined surface’ authored by Cao et al.; and ‘Investigations on the axial cutting force during drilling of carbon fiber composite material’ authored by Wu et al.