Information Technology for Balanced Manufacturing Systems IFIP TC 5, WG 5.5 Seventh International Conference on Information Technology for Balanced Automation Systems in Manufacturing and Services, Niagra Falls, Ontario, Canada, September 4-6, 2006

The manufacturing sector has been facing major challenges as it undergoes revolutionary changes fuelled by new and sophisticated demands from customers, global competition, distribution of manufacturing and marketing activities, and technological advances. In order to address these challenges, manufacturing enterprises need to change the way they do business and adopt innovative technologies and solutions to increase their responsiveness and production efficiency. Information technology plays an essential role in this process. Current manufacturing systems are collections of complex systems or subsystems operating in distributed collaborative environments involving software, hardware, humans, and organizations. It is crucial to keep a balance between the technical aspects of automation and the human and social facets when applying information technology in industrial applications, particularly with the rapid advancements in information and communication technologies and the wide deployment of automated manufacturing systems. However, in order to create appropriate frameworks for exploring the best synergies between humans and automated systems, there are still numerous issues in terms of processes characterization, modeling, and development of adequate support tools. BASYS conferences have been developed and organized to promote the development of balanced automation systems in an attempt to address these issues. The first BASYS conference was successfully launched in Victoria, Brazil (1995), and then the following conferences were held in Lisbon, Portugal (1996), Prague, Czech Republic (1998), Berlin, Germany (2000), Cancun, Mexico (2002), and Vienna, Austria (2004).

Keynote Papers.- Agent Based Manufacturing.- Tool Condition Monitoring in Machining - Neural Networks.- Agent-Based Supply Chain Planning in the Forest Products Industry.- Multi-Agent and Holonic Systems in Manufacturing.- An Agent-OS for Autonomous Cooperative Systems.- A Holonic Approach to Dynamic Manufacturing Scheduling.- Toward Collaborative Scheduling.- A Framework of Agent-Based Supply Chain Performance Analysis System.- An Agent-Based Simulation of A Jit Material Handling System.- Uncertain Temporal Support in Multiagent Medical Service.- Collaborative Event Management in Supply Chains: An Agent-Based Approach.- Design Patterns for Distributed Control System Benchmaking.- Industrial Application Integration Using Agent-Enabled Sematic SOA: Capnet Case Study.- A Multiagent Based Control System Applied to an Educational Shop Floor.- Networked Enterprises.- Distributted Work Environments for Collaborative Engineering.- Market Of Resources as an Enabler Of (Inter-)Organizational Reconfiguration Dynamics.- Business Networks in Small Textile Entrprises: The Case Of Nova Friburgo-Brasil.- Business Process Based Integration of Dynamic Collaborative Organizations.- Managing Complexity in Industrial Collaborations Within Tool & Die Industry.- A Multiagent-Based Complex Systems Approach for Efficient Partnering in Virtual Enterprise.- Design for Product Lifecycle Management.- Towards a Reference Model for Collaborative Networked Organizations.- Agent- Based Intelligent Media Distribution in Advertisement.- A Service Composabilty Model to Support Dynamic Cooperation of Cross-Enterprise Services.- On Formal Theories - And Formalisms for Virtual Enterprises.- Towards a Distributed Process Execution Platform for Collaborative Networks.- Integrated Design and Assembly.- AnInnovative Maintenance Solution for Complex Machinery: The Kobas Project Case.- Real-Time Collaborative Design System for Product Assembly Over the Internet.- An Integrated Approach to a Multi-Attribute Decision Problem Through a Case Study.- Making Manufacturing Changes Less Disruptive: Agent-Driven Integration.- A Vision-Based Approach af Bare-Hand Interface Design in Virtual Assembly.- On the Assembly line: A View from Industrial Sociology.- An Object Based Virtual Reality Simulation Tool for Design Validation of a New Paradigm Manufacturing Facility.- On the Re-Configurability Design of Parallel Machine Tools.- Evolvable Assembly Systems Basic Principles.- A Cellular Neural Network for Deformable Object Modelling.- Monitoring and Control.- A Load Balancing Method for Dedicated Photolithography Machine Constraint.- Iterative Heuristics for Permutation Flow Shops with Total Flowtime Minimization.- Parameter Estimation for Time-Varying System Based on Combinatorial PSO.- Remote Monitoring and Control of Manufacturing System.- Architecture of a Web-Based Power SCADA System Using J2EE Technology.- A Web-Based CSCW System for Remote Substation Fault Diagnosis.- A Service-Oriented Framework for Integration of Shop Floor Scheduling and Control.- Computational Representation, Heterogeneity and Integration of Production System Models.- Timed-Event-State-Based Diagnoser for Manufacturing Systems.- NFC Technologies in Mobile Phones and Emerging Applications.- Integrated Knowledge and Simulation-Based Facility Supervision and Control.- On Stability Analysis of Bearing-Rotor System.- Batch Roundness Characterization and Evaluation.- A Point Cloud Simplification Algorithm for Mechanical Part Inspection.- Degeneration Methods in Intelligent Building Control System Design.- A New Method for the Hierarchical Modelling of Productive Systems.- Modelling and On-Line Monitoring of Machined Surface in Turning Operations.