Special Issue: New artificial intelligence paradigms for manufacturing

This Special Issue was motivated in part by the success of the 2001 American Association for Artificial Intelligence's Special Interest Group on Manufacturing (SIGMAN) workshop. SIGMAN has organized a series of these workshops that highlight significant advances in academic research and industrial practice. New manufacturing concepts such as agile/lean manufacturing and virtual manufacturing place increasing emphasis on the need for more intelligent manufacturing systems. It is no longer a question of whether artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will have an impact on manufacturing but one of better understanding and exploiting the broad potential of AI in this domain.