Proceedings of the International Conference on
Product Lifecycle Management    PLM'09
Supporting the extended enterprise
PLM-SP5, 2009


EDITORIAL

The University of Bath

The University of Bath, situated on a small, friendly campus on the outskirts of Bath, a spectacularly beautiful city standing on the River Avon among the hills of England’s West Country, was founded in 1966 although it can trace its roots back to the mid-19th century. The university has a strong reputation for teaching and research, particularly in the physical sciences, mathematics, management, social sciences, engineering and technology. It has in the order of 9,500 undergraduate and 3,700 postgraduate students, of whom more than 25% are from outside of the UK. The Conference was hosted at the university by the Innovative Design and Manufacturing Research Centre (IdMRC), located in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The Centre is unique in the UK in its emphasis on research in both design and manufacture, based on long-established research strengths in machine design and design information systems, and in manufacturing processes and systems. The Centre has a strong portfolio of research in design and manufacture and their interface, including CADCAM, product-service-systems, sustainable design, manufacturing interoperability, metrology and assembly. The Centre was thus an ideal host for the Conference. The IdMRC's work is widely supported by industry, especially from the aerospace and packaging sectors and with emerging strengths in shoe and electronics manufacture. The region in which Bath is situated is a centre of high technology industry, especially of the aerospace and defence industries – the region has airframe, engine and helicopter manufacturers and a supply chain of over 1000 businesses. The automotive industry, electronics/computing, measuring instruments and medical devices also have a strong presence in the region. Delegates at the Conference had an opportunity to visit local companies in the aerospace industries.

PLM-IWG

PLM09 was promoted by the International Working Group on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM-IWG), a non-profit initiative which groups researchers and practitioners of PLM. Members of PLM-IWG support and constitute the editorial board of the International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management (IJPLM), published by Inderscience Publishers.

IFIP TC5 WG5.1

During the PLM09 conference the first meeting was held of the Working Group 5.1 (WG5.1) of the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) concerned with Global Product Development for the Whole Life-Cycle. This WG aims to understand the whole life cycle impact of products in product development, including the analysis of the interaction of products with the environment, understanding of the life cycle costs of products (the total costs of ownership) and of their interaction with users. PLM is a core element of this understanding, and thus IJPLM will be the official journal of WG5.1 and the PLM conference will be from 2010 the official conference of WG5.1

Chris McMahon
Deba Dutta
George Huang
(Editors)