Over more than twenty years, numerous new concepts, methodologies and tools have been developed within the context of concurrent engineering (CE). During this period, the background for engineering/manufacturing has changed extensively. Now, industry has to work with global markets. This globalization has brought forth a new network of experts and companies across many different domains and fields in distributed environments. These collaborations, integrated with a very high level of professionalism and specialization, have provided the basis for innovations in design and manufacturing, and have succeeded in creating new products for a global market. No matter how diversified concurrent engineering (CE) may be, there is certainly a direction common to all the CE research and applications. The reader will find that, although each paper deals with different issues, the main thrust of most of the papers contained in New World Situation: New Directions in Concurrent Engineering is towards the human, i.e., viewing a designer as human, engineer as human, and customer as human. This trend is also reflected in session organization: design knowledge utilization and knowledge engineering, product design and development, lean product development, human centric product design and development, advanced manufacturing and mass customization, and advanced manufacturing. New World Situation: New Directions in Concurrent Engineering collects papers accepted for the 17th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering, held in Cracow, Poland, September 6-10, 2010. It aims to establish new directions in the rapidly changing world of CE and to enable readers to find the directions that will work best in their own particular environments.
