Due to the Covid-19 pandemic the Scientific Technical Committee: Life Cycle Engineering and Assembly (STC-A) had an E-Meeting held on February 17 and a hybrid meeting hosted in Bilbao on August 26.

The February STC LCE/A meeting was attended by 72 people and the Bilbao meeting had 66 attendees.

CIRP conferences and sponsored conferences under STC LCE/A:

CIRP Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) conferences

• 29th LCE Conference, 2022, Leuven, Belgium (Profs. Dewulf and Duflou)
• 30th LCE Conference, 2023, New Jersey, USA (Prof. Guo and Dr. Helu)
• 31st LCE Conference, 2024, Torino (Profs. Settineri and Priarone)
• 32nd LCE Conference, 2025, Manchester (Prof. Mativenga)

CIRP Conference on Assembly Technologies and Systems (CATS):

• 9th Conference on Assembly Technology and Systems, Flexible Assembly & Disassembly Systems, 2022, Leuven (Profs. Kellens and Demeester)
• 10th Conference on Assembly Technology and Systems, AI in Assembly, Modular Configurable Assembly Technology & Disassembly and Remanufacturing, 2024, Karlsruhe (Prof. Fleischer)

Sponsored conferences:

• 18th Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing (GCSM) 2022 (Profs. Kohl, Dietrich and Seliger)
• 11th Conference on Through-life Engineering Services 2022 (Prof. Erkoyuncu)
• Conference on Production Technologies and Systems for E-Mobility E|PTS 2023 (Prof. Franke)
  
  

STC A Keynote Papers

The 2022 STC-A keynote was Kara et al.: Closed Loop Systems to Circular Economy: Staying within the Planetary Boundaries

Future keynote papers are:

• 2023 – Makris et al.: Automated Assembly of Non-Rigid Objects
• 2024 – Sakao et al.: Implementing Circular Economy Activities in Manufacturing for Environmental Sustainability
• 2025 – Wang et al.: Human-Centric Assembly in Smart Factories
• 2026 – Thiede et al.: Decarbonisation of Manufacturing towards Net Zero
  
  

Technical Presentations

Virtual winter meeting (2022):

• Youichi Nonaka: Revitalizing Human-Machine Interaction for the Advancement of Society
• Dimitris Mourtzis: From Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0: Developing the Operator 5.0 for the Human-Centric Manufacturing
• Kirsten Tracht: Handedness as a Factor for Productivity in Manual Assembly
• Gisela Lanza: Automated disassembly enabling circular economy - how to achieve efficiency while remaining flexibility to cope with uncertainty

The first three technical presentations were part of a moderated discussion on "Industriy 5.0 and Human Centricity" (Moderator: STC-Chair).

Hybrid GA Meeting – Bilbao (2022)

• Fazel Ansari: Towards Adaptive and Personalized Work Systems in Manufacturing
• Sotiris Makris: Seamless and Safe Human Centered Robotics for Novel Collaborative Workplaces
• Stefano Baraldo: Human-aware Behaviour Framework for Collaborative Industrial Robots Supported by Physiological Signals
• Karl Haapala: Integration of Information Modeling and Manufacturing System Design Approaches toward Sustainable Manufacturing

The first three technical presentations were part of a moderated discussion on "Industriy 5.0 and Human Centricity in Production" (Moderator Kirsten Tracht).

Other business

Proposals for CIRP Novel Topics in Production Engineering (tbp in 2023):

• Urgo et al.: AI-based Pose Estimation of Human Operators in Manufacturing Environments
• Makris et al.: Seamless Human-Robot Collaboration in Industry
  
  

Officers

The Officers of STC LCE/A are:
Chair: Prof. Jörg Krüger
Vice-chair: Prof. Yasushi Umeda
Secretary: Prof. Lihui Wang

For further details on the activities of STC LCE/A please consult the minutes from the virtual winter meeting and the hybrid meeting in Bilbao.

Respectfully submitted by
Jörg Krüger / Yasushi Umeda / Lihui Wang