This book of proceedings contains papers peer reviewedaccepted for the 21st ISPE Inc. International Conference on Concurrent Engineering held at the Beijing Jiaotong University, China, September 8–11th, 2014. This is the first issue of the newly introduced series “Advances in Transdisciplinary Engineering” which will publish the proceedings of the CE conference series. The CE conference series is organized annually by the International Society for Productivity Enhancement (ISPE Inc.) and constitutes an important forum for international scientific exchange on concurrent and collaborative enterprise engineering. These international conferences attract a significant number of researchers, industry experts and students, as well as government representatives, who are interested in the recent advances in concurrent engineering research, advancements and applications.

Developed in the 80's, the CE approach is based on the concept that different phases of a product life cycle should be conducted concurrently and initiated as early as possible within the Product Creation Process (PCP), including the implications within the extended enterprise. The main goal of CE is to increase the efficiency of the PCP and to reduce errors in the late phases, as well as full lifecycle and through-life operational considerations. In the past decades, CE has become the substantive basic methodology in many industries (automotive, aerospace, machinery, shipbuilding, consumer goods, process industry, environmental engineering) and is also adopted in the development of new services and service support.

The initial basic CE concepts have matured and have become the foundations of many new ideas, methodologies, initiatives, approaches and tools. Generally, the current CE focus concentrates on enterprise collaboration and its many different elements; from integrating people and processes, to very specific complete multi/inter/transdisciplinary solutions. Current research on CE is driven again by many factors like increased customer demands, globalization, (international) collaboration and environmental strategies. The successful application of CE in the past opens also the perspective for future applications like overcoming natural catastrophes and sustainable mobility concepts with electrical vehicles.

The CE2014 Organizing Committee has identified 27 thematic areas within CE and launched a Call For Papers accordingly, with resulting submissions submitted from all continents of the world. The conference is entitled: “Moving Integrated Product Development to Service Clouds in the Global Economy”. This title reflects the variety of processes and methods which influences the modern product creation. Finally the submissions as well as invited talks were collated into 12 streams led by outstanding researchers and practitioners.

The Proceedings contains 88 peer-reviewed papers by authors from 22 countries and two invited keynote papers. These papers range from the theoretical, conceptual and to the strong pragmatic that contain industrial best practice. The involvement of more than 10 companies from many industries in the presented papers gives special importance for this conference.

This book on ‘Moving Integrated Product Development to Service Clouds in the Global Economy’ is directed at three constituencies: researchers, design practitioners, and educators. Researchers will benefit from the latest research results and knowledge in the product creation processes and such related methodologies. Engineering professionals and practitioners will learn from the current state of the art in concurrent engineering practice, new approaches, methods, tools and their applications. The educators in the CE community disseminate and learn from the latest advances and methodologies for engineering curricula, and the community also encourages young educators to bring new ideas into the field.

Part 1 of the Proceedings comprises the keynotes while part 2 is entitled “Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)” and addresses an advanced overview on new research and development in product lifecycle management (PLM) from many industry sectors. Part 3 contains the most contributions and outlines the importance of Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) within CE which kind of methods to develop, and what the general approach in the product creation process for capturing and using this knowledge.

In Part 4 a variety of the cloud approaches in manufacturing and service is highlighted while Part 5 addresses novel 3D printing applications. Part 6 focuses on design methods in the context of CE while Part 7 addresses specific educational methods and achievements within CE. Part 8 illustrates a number of key-topics on simulation of complex systems and Part 9 deals with the broad variety of use cases for the systems engineering of complex products.

Finally, Part 10 highlights various aspects of services as innovation and science with manifold applications, Part 11 recalls sustainability as basic requirement of engineering activity, and Part 12 comprises the recent research on open innovation in CE, together with some associated strategic directives.

We acknowledge the high quality contributions of all authors to this book, and the work of the members of the International Program Committee who assisted with the blind triple peer-review of the original papers submitted and presented at the conference. You are sincerely invited to consider all of the contributions made by this year's participants through the presentation of CE2014 papers collated into this book of proceedings, in the hope that you will be further inspired in your work by giving your ideas for new approaches for sustainable product development in a multi-disciplinary environment within the ISPE Inc. community.

Jianzhong Cha, General Chair

Beijing Jiaotong University, China

Shuo-Yan Chou, Co-General Chair

Taiwan Tech, Taiwan, China

Josip Stjepandić, Program Chair

PROSTEP AG, Germany

Richard Curran, Co-Program Chair

TU Delft, The Netherlands

Wensheng Xu, Secretary General

Beijing Jiaotong University, China