Editorial: Updated Scope for Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing Systems

The advances in AI/ML, cloud infrastructure, sensor technologies, edge devices, digital twins, sustainability, product lifecycle engineering and management, circular manufacturing, and related enabling and emerging technologies, have made significant impacts on smart and sustainable manufacturing R&D, technologies, and innovation. We are taking this great opportunity to update and modify the scope of ASTM’s journal Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing Systems (SSMS), while not significantly disrupting the nature of the journal, to help the audience (researchers, students, industry practitioners, and possibly policy experts) and, more broadly, the community of researchers and stakeholders. We will ensure a balance between fundamental research and practical applications within the journal’s scope through peer-reviewed research papers, technical notes, review articles, case studies, and discussions. We will also continue to publish special issues that focus on specific topics of interest. We have scoped the journal under the following focused and interconnected domains and topics: Information, Knowledge, AI/ML Data Analytics, and Semantics Modeling Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing and Infrastructure Enabling Technologies, Computing, and Digital Transformation (Digital Thread and Digital Twins) Product Lifecycle Engineering and Management Our aim is to address the needs of different communities that make a significant impact on problems: Theories, experiments, products, processes, and systems, sustainable engineering, lifecycle engineering, manufacturing, and supply chains Computer science, physical science, synthesis/processing science, sustainability science, and engineering R&D, technology, commercial hardware and software solutions, system integration through standards Our hope is to create innovation through a cross-discipline domain approach. We propose to achieve “translational manufacturing” research aimed at translating (converting) results in basic research across disciplines into results that directly benefit humans. Like “bench to bedside” in medical research and “field to fork” in food processing, “translational manufacturing” translates breakthroughs in advanced research into commercial technologies, products, and applications, “lab to market”—linking science and engineering research to commercial outcomes. Thank you for exploring the Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing Systems journal. Please contact the editorial office if you have any questions about submitting a paper to the journal.