recently, many new technologies have been developed for engineers to reduce the time required to design and manufacture products in response to rapidly fluctuating market demands. this book addresses a variety of contemporary methodologies, technologies and tools for rapid response manufacturing. the contributions to this volume focus on two major rrm areas: desktop manufacturing and computer and information technologies. rapid response manufacturing is an invaluable resource for research engineers, product design and manufacturing engineers, graduate engineering students, and all those concerned with concurrent engineering.