Tony Schmitz served as guest editor for a special issue of the ASME Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering entitled “Enhanced Process-Machine Interaction through Design, Tooling, Automation, and Modeling”. His co-editors are: Prof. Burak Sencer, Oregon State University; Jaydeep Karandikar, GE Global Research Center; and Chris Tyler, Boeing.
The special issue focus is computer numerically-controlled (CNC) manufacturing equipment and tooling, which has led to the automation of many processes and significant productivity advances. The demand for high quality products and cost effective processes continues to grow and drives the design of new machinery, intelligent tooling, and sophisticated control and automation techniques. However, the efficiency and throughput of modern manufacturing processes still depends on the interaction of the machine with the process. This motivates research in the area of process-machine interaction focusing on design, tooling, automation, and modeling.