Foreword.

Kuttner, Rein

Over the past 10 years, DAAAM Baltic (DAAAM--Danube Adria Association for Automation & Manufacturing) has been an international forum for scientists and engineers to present their research results in the areas of industrial engineering, manufacturing and automation. It provides an avenue for the discussion and exchange of new ideas concerning new techniques and methods for product development and manufacturing engineering. DAAAM Baltic would not be possible without contributions from members of the scientific community of the Baltic Sea region.

The main idea of organizing the 5th Conference DAAAM Baltic was to give for active scientists of the Baltic Sea region an opportunity to introduce their works and to find partners in research. DAAAM Baltic meetings are regional conferences (or smaller brothers) of DAAAM International events. They are organized in Estonia every second year. Estonia has been a member of the DAAAM International Committee since 1994. The DAAAM International was founded in 1990 at Vienna (initiative of Professor B. Katalinic). Today the Association connects 36 countries, mainly from Eastern and Central Europe. For many years DAAAM activities in Estonia were lead by Prof. Jyri Papstel, who passed away two years ago.

For already 10 years the Proceedings of the DAAAM Baltic have been published. The last Proceedings of DAAAM Baltic have been internationally indexed in ISI Web of Proceedings. In 2006 we received about 70 proposals for delivering papers at the Conference. About 90 participants from 15 European countries took part in the Conference. All proposals and full texts were carefully peer-reviewed and 55 papers from 14 countries were selected for oral presentation. This special issue of the Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Engineering contains a selection of papers, presented at the 5th Conference DAAAM Baltic.

Rein Kuttner

Chairman of the Scientific Committee of DAAAM Baltic 2006