Preface

Manufacturing and Computer Science – these are major usage fields for applications using Petri Nets, which are the subject of the present monograph.

Manufacturing, i.e. producing goods, is one of the realms of human activity which has greatly affected the development of civilization. Over centuries, the large-scale manufacturing of goods changed the social relations, created new lifestyles and contributed to the improvement of life conditions of whole societies. The economic development has become an objective realized by states and commonwealths of states. It includes both quantitative changes referring to the growth in production, employment, investments, the scale of operating capital, incomes, consumption as well as other economic values describing the quantitative character of the economy (economic growth) and qualitative changes (changes in the organization of society). The improvement of life standards, the increase in production, a better social situation and greater public security are the basic benefits resulting from economic growth and development. Nowadays, owing to the increasingly complex products and technologies, the manufacturing still strongly stimulates development. It considerably affects other fields, e.g. computer science, as it creates new challenges. The role of production in the world is still crucial. When comparing the crisis in the automotive industry with the IT companies crisis (the so-called dot-com bubble burst), we can see that the first one had a more widespread effect over the world. The growing role of China, the leader in the scale and growth of production, changes the global distribution of power.

> **Pawel Pawlewski** Department of Management Engineering, Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland

**Section 1** 

**Manufacturing** 

**Section 1** 
