For two decades, the CIRP Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) Conference has continued its steady course since its creation. It has grown significantly beyond its original scopes and objectives and has seen researchers in this field doubled and tripled in the last 10 years. Sustainable manufacturing is a major initiative of almost all the manufacturing industries worldwide, in an effort to prolong the life of products, reduce the use of toxic materials and carbon footprint, conserve energy, not only for meeting the needs of the manufacturers and consumers, but also the multi-stakeholders in the entire business chain.

In 2013, Singapore has the honor of hosting the 20th CIRP LCE, with its organizers from SIMTech , the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology and the National University of Singapore. For Singapore, this is a major CIRP event since the General Assembly which was held in 1994.

The conference has accepted some 117 papers from 28 countries. All the papers have been subject to the rigorous peer review and revision process by experts in the field. The topics covered in LCE2013 include Sustainabledesign – approaches and methodologies, methods and tools; Methods and tools for resource efficient manufacturing; technologies for energy efficient machine tools; Sustainable manufacturing process – machining, cleaning, coating, forming and molding; Analysis and tools for reuse and recycling; Supply chain management; Sustainability analysis – methodologies and tools, various case studies; Sustainability management; Remanufacturing – business and management, design and analysis, process technologies, reliability assessment; Social sustainability.

Keynote speeches will be delivered by eminent researchers in the field of LCE: Prof ShahinRahimifard from Loughborough University, Prof Nabil Nasr from Rochester Institute of Technology, Prof I S Jawahir from University of Kentucky, Prof Zhang Hong-Chao from Texas Tech University.

We would like to thank all the reviewers, authors, support from the National University of Singapore and SIMTech, and all the participants for making LCE2013 a real success. We understand that some participants travel no less than some 15 hours to come to Singapore, and it could also be their very first visit. We wish them a most pleasant stay, and enjoy the food, culture, and the latest attractions in Singapore, in addition to fruitful discussion at the Conference.