The School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at Dublin City University was established in 1987. Since then the School has been offering undergraduate and postgraduate taught programs and postgraduate degrees by research, with academic staff also pursuing individual research.

Most of the School’s staff is a member of the University Designated Materials Processing Research Centre. Through industrial contacts and national and international research funds, the School has developed expertise in the following research areas:

• Advanced Manufacturing processes
• Condition Monitoring
• AI in Manufacturing
• Design for Manufacturing and Assembly
• Materials Performance
• Virtual Manufacturing
• Manufacturing Systems and Processes Simulation

The Robotics Group, of the Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics Department, University of Patras, exhibits a wide range of expertise in the development of innovative open-architecture robots, intelligent robot-systems control based on Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic and Genetic Algorithms, as well as automatic generation of assembly strategies and intelligent control for manufacturing processes. Furthermore, knowledge-based methods for handling of non-rigid materials have been developed; and now the Robotics Group through a national project aims to the development of an intelligent system for robot handling of fabrics in separation, seam operation and quality control. This expertise can contribute to the next generation of flexible assembly automation and agile, clean and re-configurable manufacturing systems.

The Robotics Group has a considerable research experience in the theoretical foundation of mechanical and systematic mechatronic design and has developed design indices for the monitoring of the mechatronic approach during the design process. A CAD system for shoe design has been developed and efforts to incorporate qualitative knowledge into CAD systems as well as intelligence into Robot simulators are attempted. These research efforts are aimed to the next generation of intelligent CAD systems for designing devices - machines and intelligent robot simulators for performing knowledge-based design and optimisation for the virtual factory of the future.

The Fraunhofer-Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (Fraunhofer-IPK), Berlin, Germany, is a research institute and is a part of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (FhG) for the promotion of applied research. The FhG presently consists of about 50 institutes throughout Germany and is a non-profit organisation. The Fraunhofer IPK (about 110 scientist staff members) is located in Berlin and works in the fields of Automation and Robotics, Corporate Management, Product Manufacturing, Security and Testing Systems, and Virtual Product Development.

The institute is mainly concerned with increasing the productivity of industrial processes. This implies a wide range of activities from improving certain functions of machines up to designing complex production systems and planning whole factories. Moreover the IPK carries out intensive work in the areas of reorganisation of factory structures, business process optimisation, personnel training, and quality management. Also, the IPK has been increasingly successful in transferring know-how from production technology to the fields of traffic, safety and environmental technology. A special concern of the IPK is providing small and medium-sized companies with innovative technologies.

The Dept. of Materials & Production Engineering (DIMP) of the Science and Technology Pole (STP) of the University of Naples Federico II specialises in innovative materials, advanced manufacturing and related information technologies. It supports a broad spectrum of basic, strategic and applied research, developing links with both large and small companies. DIMP has a very large number of industrial partners and collaborative projects with more than 15 countries in Europe. As a result, DIMP is now one of the largest and most successful Departments in any Italian university. DIMP has a research budget of about 6 MEuro. Within it, the Laboratory for Advanced Production Technology (LAPT), coordinated by Prof. R. Teti, is actively involved in multimedia, knowledge-based systems, HTML publishing, virtual reality research, product modelling information re-use, intelligent sensors development and application, image processing, non-destructive evaluation, reverse engineering, intelligent computation for manufacturing engineering, etc. DIMP has a strong team, comprising over 100 people, including post-doctoral/doctoral researchers and experienced design and manufacturing engineers complemented by marketing and administrative staff. At DIMP, faculty staff have been working for a long time in a number of areas vital to manufacturing and materials technology.

The Institute of Production Engineering and Machine Tools (Institut für Fertigungstechnik und Werkzeugmaschinen, IFW) is one of the academic departments of the University of Hannover and among the well known research institutes of the Federal Republic of Germany in the field of production engineering. It has a strong reputation in the fields of production management and organisation, machining technology, machine tools, robotics and controls as well as technological information systems. Its activities are aimed at rationalise the manufacturing processes though a balance of fundamental and application oriented research works. The results of the institute’s efforts are accredited world-wide. The close co-operation of the institute with the industry accounts for the good insight of the problems and demands in production environments. Approximately 40 % of the yearly turnover of the IFW is achieved by means of projects which are directly financed by industrial partners, many of whom are SMEs. Beside these sort of projects and the basic research programs funded by the German Research Council (DFG), the IFW has been successfully involved in several European projects like Brite/Euram, Esprit and Copernicus. Related EU-funded projects are HIPARMS, EASYCON, BETTI, COCOS, TOPSYS, FLAMINGO, MAREA, EUROSHOE, AMADEUS, ECOWIRE and ENGY. The IFW employees around 65 research engineers, several technician, programmers, staff personnel as well as about 150 students working as part-time employees.