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As most existing computer‐aided design systems do not provide part feature information which is essential for process planning, automatic part feature recognition systems serve as an important link between Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP). Attempts to provide a structural framework for understanding various issues related to part feature recognition. Reviews previous work in the field of part feature recognition and classifies known feature recognition systems for the sake of updating information and future research. Briefly introduces about 12 systems. Studies 31 systems and lists them in the Appendix based on 60 references. Comments on future research directions.

This paper investigates the quality and quantity of climate-related information disclosed by public interest entities (PIEs) in the non-financial disclosure scenario. Thus, this paper aims at drafting the state of the art on what is climate-related information disclosed by PIEs in the changing EU non-financial regulation assuming the Italian scenario and the industrial industry as significant in achieving the research aims.

The authors used the content analysis composing the sample of 34 large listed companies (i.e. PIEs) belonging to the industrial sector in Italy. The authors choose the Italian PIEs’ sustainability reports published in 2019 after the adoption of the EU directive and its guidelines. The authors adopted a coding and classification system, investigating the climate-related information through a systematic, objective and reliable method. The authors defined 99 indicators along the structure of the European Commission's guidelines and the indicator of disclosure, climate-related information indicator (CII). The framework mainly derives from the corporate disclosure theory and legitimacy and stakeholders' theories.

The results show the lack of several required climate-related information or a not in-depth presentation of information. Thus, findings are interesting in emphasizing that the current climate-related disclosure is at an early stage in complying with the European Commission's guidelines. Additionally, the findings enlarge previous theories on corporate disclosure, proposing new insights in the light of the recent interest in climate-related information.

Evidence contributes to extending the existing literature, drafting the state of the art of what is the quality and the quantity of the climate-related information in the corporate disclosure in the European scenario.

This paper is directed to propose the state of the climate-related disclosure following the EU directive guidelines, proposing some evidence to support the path toward the integrations of information by several parts (e.g. companies, regulators and so on).

The paper is a useful baseline for academics, practitioners, policy-makers and regulators in understanding actions to adopt in the climate-related disclosure and what could be the impact of forthcoming regulations in the field, also having some metrics (e.g. score value of disclosure, the indicator of climate-related information disclosure – CII).

Work on robotic assembly is advancing on a broad front at the University of Salford, which has been involved in aspects of assembly for the past 20 years. For a review of progress Jack Hollingum went to see Dr Alan Redford, who has been involved with the work from its beginning.

Presents an assignment model formulation for the machine cell formation problem in cellular manufacturing based on an appropriate definition of dissimilarlity between any pair of machines for the grouping problem. This dissimilarity measure considers the production volume or demand for the parts on the respective machines and forms the cost parameters for the assignment model which is to be minimized. Identification of the machine cells automatically yields the corresponding part groups which are then assigned to the cells. The model is fast‐converging, taking advantage of the well‐proven assignment algorithm. Also presents an algorithm for dealing with mild cases of exceptional elements and too many machine cells. Uses numerical examples to illustrate the model.

Health sector is one of the most important sectors when the size of spending and the number of people and organizations involved are considered. An important characteristic of this sector is the dominance of governments as health care providers and/or financers. This fact has important procurement policy implications. This paper gives a detailed overview of the health sector in Turkey and issues surrounding public procurement in this sector. It presents a model for implementation of eprocurement in Turkey’s public health sector, a discussion about the extent to which e-procurement can solve prevailing problems and suggestions to improve procurement in this sector.

In recent years the diagnostic, treatment, educational, and counselling services in the field of rehabilitation in Israel have expanded. As a result, the need arose to centralize information about the services so that it would be possible to provide correct and up‐to‐date information to the professionals, the service planners, the policymakers, and those in need.

The concept of group technology (GT) is drawing increasing interest from manufacturing industry for its potential to enhance productivity and efficiency. This paper identifies the major areas of manufacturing and operations management where GT can be of significance. GT may have a sizable impact inparts design, by standardizing the design and eliminating redundancies. Computer‐aided process planning together with GT can vastly improve the productivity of process designers and also simplify the design. The benefits derived from GT in the area of production planning and control are reduced queue time, smaller lot‐sizes, less work‐in‐process, better scheduling and so on. The limitations of GT are the relative lack of experience with GT and the initial cost of change‐over to GT. It is suggested that implementations of GT should be a slow gradual shift rather than a sudden change of functional lay‐out.

A NOTED engineer of our acquaintance started his career as an apprentice working under a foreman of Huguenot descent and who was known affectionately—well, generally!—as Papa Poisson. He was very knowledgable and was very fond of telling his juniors how he had worked, many years previously, at Rolls‐Royce when that name really meant something.

Declares that too many employees either waste time and energy worrying about where the boundaries of their duties and responsibilities lie, or they are subject to initiative stifled by inflexible job specifications. Employs 2 Figures, one that gives the definitions of workset colours — defined as separating out types of work — and the other giving the dynamic nature of a job. Goes on to explain how the colour coding system works in great detail.

Presents a distributed manufacturing system concept designed to address the problem of flexibility in providing a variety of parts in small to medium batches. Discusses links with CADCAM hardware structure levels, software structure, and the human‐centred approach adopted. Surmises that the key to the distributed systems effectiveness lies in co‐ordination and co‐operation between the area and cell levels rather than information.