The purpose of this conference is to provide a forum for an exchange of ideas between researchers in the Manufacturing Systems Program, Manufacturing Machines and Systems Program, and the Automation and Systems Integration Program mainly, to assure that these individual researchers are informed about the present ongoing activities of their colleagues. Thus an elimination of duplication of their efforts may be achieved and a degree of cooperation may result. An overall improvement of efficiency of the programs would be expected. In addition, the conference program organization allows for ample time to discuss manufacturing research in detail with the collective research community at the meeting with feedback and input from the National Science Foundation. Finally, personal contacts with researchers in the programs should contribute to clarifying many current problems in their work. Principal Investigator's will have one to two years advanced information as it often takes that much time between the report of the work presented at the grantees conference and the publication of papers about this work in the literature.
