Applied Industrial Technologies Correlated to Advanced Decision-Making Techniques in Dynamic Industry 4.0 Sustainable Engineering Processes

Dear Colleagues,

The successful enrolment of Industry 4.0 into worldwide engineering processes is highly dependent on advanced decision-making techniques, whose capabilities to model, evaluate and optimize highly dynamic, sustainability-oriented properties are increasingly applied in everyday life, presenting the transfer of theoretical methods and approaches to applied cases. Therefore, improving social, environmental, and economic prospects can lead to a better new world. The globalized market and digitally supported industry, regardless of the production type, from the most basic job shop to mass personalized production, aim to optimized engineering processes. In the era of Industry 4.0 (and beyond), where the high complexity of engineering processes is reflected in applied cases of the multi-criteria decision making, optimization problems need to be solved with advanced evolutionary computation methods, complex systems simulations, and new visual computing approaches. Personalized products in Industry 4.0 manufacturing systems are represented by the high-mix, low-volume production type, for which adequate evaluation of different optimization parameters is crucial. The impact of highly dynamic processes (rapidly changing global demounts and new global paradigms) needs to be further explored to sustainably justify engineering processes in globalized markets.

This Special Issue on “Applied Industrial Technologies Correlated to Advanced Decision-Making Techniques in Dynamic Industry 4.0 Sustainable Engineering Processes” aims to incorporate recent developments in decision-making techniques, Industry 4.0 and sustainable engineering processes. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Evolutionary Techniques;
• Optimization Techniques;
• Numerical Techniques;
• Decision Theory and Methods;
• Decision Support Systems;
• Complex Systems and Methodology;
• Dynamic Simulation of Systems;
• Manufacturing Systems;
• Production Planning and Scheduling;
• Industrial Processes;
• Operations Research, Business Systems Simulation;
• Intelligent Simulation;      
• Knowledge-Based Simulation;
• Real-Time Systems;
• Visual Computing Methods;
• Collaborative Robotics and Industrial Manipulators;
• Service Systems;
• Self-Organizing Systems;
• Supply Chain Management;
• Logistics Management;
• Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality;
• Work Study and Ergonomics.

We sincerely hope that contributed articles and our effort in compiling them will enrich the global scientific knowledge base and inspire researchers to conduct further state-of-the-art research.

Dr. Robert Ojstersek
Prof. Dr. Iztok Palčič
Dr. Hankun Zhang
Guest Editors

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