Smart manufacturing experts from across the world provide their views on gaps, challenges, opportunities, and disruptive technologies in transitioning research to technology, products, and the marketplace in this special issue.

Thirteen peer-reviewed articles give the latest information and trends, addressing such topics as:

– computer-aided manufacturing/computer numerical control
– foundations of information governance
– analyzing manufacturing issues on factory floors
– enabling data of production systems for decision support
– privacy-preserving data mining
– deep neural network architectures for machining
– development of decision support systems
– microstructures in 3-D–printed Ti-6Al-4V using acoustic emission cepstrum
– smart acoustic emission sensing of natural fiber–reinforced polymer composite machining
– smart machining process monitoring
– process control for manual grinding operations
– hybrid concepts for factory layouts