Author Description

The field of production automation has been changing throughout the last decade. Starting with Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) via Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) to most recent developments like Agile Manufacturing and Multi-Agent Systems. The IFAC Technical Committee on Advanced Manufacturing Technology introduced IMS in 1992 in a series of workshops. The first was held in Dearborn, USA in 1992 organized by Naim Kheir, and the second took place in Vienna, Austria in 1994. IMS'98 was held in Gramado-Brazil, organized by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Department of Electrical Engineering and the 'Sociedade Brasileira de Automática' (SBA - Brazilian Society of Automatic Control), the Brazilian IFAC NMO. IMS'98 attracted 84 participants from over 15 countries. This proceedings volume includes technical papers dealing with subjects like neural networks, holonic strategies, object orientation, scheduling, modeling and control. Other papers cover areas such as robotics, storage systems, CAD/CAM/CAE, while some illustrate real applications. Compared with previous IMS workshops IMS'98 was a milestone towards new topics in the field. The first step was taken towards the application of multi-agent systems in production and factory automation by covering new topics such as virtual enterprises, holonic strategies, and agent and object-oriented strategies.