The technologies for product assembly and manufacturing evolve along with the advancement of enabling technologies such as material science, robotics, machine intelligence as well as information and communication. Furthermore, they may be subject to fundamental changes due to the shift in key product features and/or - gineering requirements. The enabling technologies emerging offer new opportunities for moving up the level of automation, optimization and reliability in product assembly and ma- facturing beyond what have been possible. We see assembly and manufacturing becoming more...