Editorial

摘要

A joint conference on cost effective automation (CEA) in Networked Product Development and Manufacturing was held at Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico, 2007. This conference was sponsored by both 1FAC technical committees of Cost Oriented Automation TC4.4 and Enterprise Integration and Networking TC 5.3.rnThe IFAC-CEA'07 conference mainly covered technical areas and topics related to the small- and medium-sized enterprise such as automation, cost reduction with maintenance systems, cost effective manufacturing automation and networking, collaborative product development, cost oriented control, and industrial automation study cases. This special issue includes extended versions of eight selected papers that proposed novel solutions to main challenges in these relevant topics.