Guest Editorial: Advanced Intelligent Manufacturing System: Theory, Algorithms, and Industrial Applications

Intelligent manufacturing has promoted the development of Industry 4.0 and enabled the manufacturing industry to gradually move into the stage of intelligence with the rapid development of the Internet of Things and the Industrial Internet. An intelligent manufacturing system is a manufacturing system that can automatically adapt to changing environments and varying process requirements with minimal supervision and assistance from operators. Therefore, intelligent manufacturing has become a recognized core high technology to enhance the overall competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. The goal of intelligent manufacturing is to make production resources form a circular network with the characteristics of autonomy, adjustability, and configurability, to develop production processes flexibly, and to realize the efficiency of individual customization. For example, by analyzing the factory floor data, equipment monitored data, and the enterprise manufacturing database, it could help to store, explore, and make complex decisions for the manufacturing system. To achieve this goal, modern information technologies, such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and mobile Internet, modeling, control, and optimization need to be integrated and collaborated with the physical resources of the manufacturing process, which triggers new theory, solution algorithms, and application scenarios.