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Manufacturing companies in high-wage countries find themselves more than ever confronted to rapidly changing requirements, an increasing competition from evolving, low-cost countries and an uncertain global environment. Shorter product lifecycles, more product variants caused by more differentiated customer demands and the desire for more individualized products, an increasing product complexity as well as decreasing delivery and throughput times are characteristic consequences for companies in this turbulent environment. In this context, the ability to adapt the product process to the changing requirements throughout the product life cycle, from the initial idea, through design and manufacture, to service and final disposal and to generate transparency along the value chain to all product related data has become an important competitive factor. Expect these complexities and continuing cost differences; the production is shaped by new trends around the world. Consequently, detecting and targeting new trends build the foundation of effective strategies, which can be adapted by companies to remain competitive and to ensure a successful business future. To achieve sustainable competitive advantages the consideration of the following trends, including innovation and technology management, supply chain management, global production, production systems and production management, information management, service management, as well as tool manufacturing and electric mobility have been identified as crucial. All these topics are dealt within this book giving a complete overview of upcoming trends which can be used as an executive guide for managers in the manufacturing industry with the scope of detecting required changes and helping to implement them successfully. This book consists of previously published papers to the mentioned subjects and is aimed at middle to top management working in the manufacturing industry. It gives first insights into future trends in the fields of production management, innovation management and technology management as main drivers influencing the competitiveness of companies in high-wage countries.

To meet and adapt to the current and future trends and issues in technology and society, the science committee of The German Academic Society for Production Engineering (WGP) continues to define future topics for production technology. These themes represent not only the key focus for the scientific work of the WGP, but also the central themes of the first annual conference in June 2011, whose paper is publically available in this volume. Such themes, including electric mobility, medical technology, lightweight construction, and resource efficiency, as well as mass production ability have all been identified as future, large-scale, and long-term drivers of change. Future trends influence changes sustainably and fundamentally; they permeate society, technology, economics, and value systems and have an effect in virtually all areas of life. The WGP has, as part of its research, established for itself the goal of not only observing these emerging changes, but also of supervising and influencing their development in order to ensure steady progress, secure sustainability, and shape the future.