The continued effects of the global spread of COVID-19 have reaffirmed that restrictions on the movement of people and products have geopolitical consequences. In addition, the impacts involved in the decarbonization of the global environment have further strengthened the growing demand for the building of a sustainable society. These factors have had no small impact on the global economy and on global manufacturing as well. In this context, the demand for the realization of new manufacturing technologies that can respond to changes in social and economic environments has been growing.

This special issue focuses on recent advances in manufacturing technologies that maximize product quality and reduce costs, with an emphasis on the machinery industry. This special issue of the IJAT contains 12 papers. These include works on cutting technology, machining metrology, advanced machine tools, gear manufacturing technology, additive manufacturing, and more. The first five papers are proposals for new cutting technologies and elucidations of cutting phenomena. The next three papers are new proposals for machining measurements. The next two papers are on precision positioning technologies and a rack gear compensation technology. The last two papers are theoretical investigations into the basic phenomenon of additive manufacturing and its applications.

These papers were originally presented at the 10th International Conference on Leading Edge Manufacturing in the 21st Century (LEM21), held in Kitakyushu, Japan in 2021. The papers have been revised and expanded at the request of the editors.

The editors would like to thank all authors for their comprehensive efforts in making this special issue possible, and would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their hard work. We wish them all the best in their future research in this field of manufacturing technology.