Manufacturing fields in high-income countries have tended to pursue high quality and high productivity together. In conventional machining, however, machine tools, cutting tools, machining process, and measurement technologies have progressed individually rather than together -- mainly due to the production industry configuration.

With society’s needs growing and diversifying, however, development approach that combines distinct technologies without integration no long ensures competitiveness. In a world where knowledge and ideas regarded as know-how and used implicitly, knowledge and ideas should be integrated into explicit software with adequate hardware.

The important issues are as follows:
(1)Process monitoring technology providing sufficient information for systems to make decisions based on economical investment
(2)Process control technology based on a deeper understanding of processes themselves and of the nature of control
(3)Motion control technology for precise, high-speed, versatile movement in support process control

This special issue provides the latest topics related to these issues, and we are sure readers will enjoy reading about and sharing ideas toward a new machine tools and manufacturing technology paradigm.

We thank the authors for their contributions to this special issue and the reviewers and editors for their ongoing efforts.