The Meetings of the Scientific Technical Committee “O” were held on 27 January, 2011 in Paris, France (48 members, 11 research affiliates, 22 guests), and on 26 August, 2011 in  Budapest, Hungary (51 members, 6 research affiliates, 11 guests).

The major activities of the STC O were the following:

Manufacturing Systems Conferences

No issue remaining from the Track 3 meetings.

Working Groups

During the General Assembly in August, R. Roy proposed launching a new Collaborative Working Group (CWG) on Continuous Maintenance. The proposal was supported.
No other CWG issue remaining from the Track 3 meetings.

Keynote Papers

At the General Assembly, it was approved that the 2012 Keynote Paper will be “Complexity in engineering design and manufacturing” co-ordinated by W. ElMaraghy, and co-authored by H. ElMaraghy, T. Tomiyama, H-P. Wiendahl, L. Monostori, D. Mourtzis and P. Butala.  The 2013 Keynote Paper will be “Scalability in Manufacturing Systems Design and Operation: State-of-the-Art and Future Developments Roadmap” co-ordinated by G. Putnik and co-authored by A. Sluga, H. ElMaraghy, R. Teti, Y. Koren, T. Tolio and B. Hon. For 2014 two proposals were presented: “Management of design principles of manufacturing systems” by W.J. Zhang, and “Design and management of manufacturing systems for production quality” by T. Tulio. The decision will be taken during the 2012 January Meeting.

Further on, H. ElMaraghy presented a Track 3 Keynote proposal for 2013: “Variety: Definitions, modelling and management”. The proposal was unanimously supported.

Paper Presentations and Technical Reports

During the STC O Paper Session at the General Assembly in Budapest (Hungary), one keynote and 19 papers were presented and discussed. At the two STC O Meetings in 2011, a total of 17 technical presentations (10 in January and 7 in August) were given and discussed.

Chairman’s Address

During the January Meeting in Paris, Chairman of STC O, K. Ueda delivered a talk entitled “A Prospect for Emerging Fields in STC O - A Challenging Direction to Value Creation”.

Corporate Members' Activities and Issues

Both during the January Meeting and the General Assembly, Vice-Chairman of STC O, R. Teti reported on the CMAG meeting and recent efforts of CIRP aimed at increasing the involvement of corporate members within the activities of STCs.

Task Force on “Global Manufacturing Strategies”

During the General Assembly, F. Jovane reported on the work of the Task Force on “Global Manufacturing Strategies” (TF-GSM). Main findings of this work are going to be published as a CIRP white paper