These two volumes contain the Proceedings of the 9th IFAC symposium on Information Control in Manufacturing which took place in Nancy and Metz, France, between 24-26 June, 1998.

This INCOM'98 program had six main themes which focused on the role of information for automating manufacturing operations; the role of information for integrating and distributing automated manufacturing activities in the whole Enterprise and; the role of information for enhancing synergies between humans and machines.

This year's symposium drew attention from more than 35 countries, and the number...