This collection of papers constitutes the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM'07) held in northern Italy during the 11-13th July 2007 and organized in a joint initiative by the PLM Cluster of Politecnico di Milano and the University of Bergamo. The conference was hosted by the newest Italian technology park, KilometroRosso, located in Stezzano, between Milano and Bergamo.

Since their first edition in Bangalore in 2003, the objective of this conference series is to bring together researchers and practitioners involved in product innovation, product development and product delivery in one forum to share their viewpoints on new product innovation, lifecycle management, and supply and service chain. As the interest around this conference demonstrated, PLM is becoming more and more relevant both in the industrial and in the scientific world. Many industrial experiences are available nowadays in the world, and many of them establish connections with research initiatives.

More than 140 papers arrived and 85 of them were accepted and published in this book, after a severe peer-review process. The selected papers cover a broad spectrum of PLM topics and are organized in four main streams, presented in the eleven chapters of this book:

• Management issues in PLM: Organizational issues (Chapter 1), Business issues (Chapter 2) and Industrial experiences (Chapter 3).
• Technical and integration issues in PLM: Data exchange (Chapter 4), Tools (Chapter 5), Interoperability (Chapter 6) and Knowledge engineering (Chapter 7).
• PLM support for product lifecycle phases: Concurrent development and engineering (Chapter 8), Middle and end of life issues (Chapter 9), Lifecycle engineering and assessment (Chapter 10).
• Plus an ad hoc stream dedicated to the European FP6 project Promise (Chapter 11).

On behalf of the co-chairs of the conference, of the organizing committee and of the program committee we thank all the authors for their valuable contributions. We also thank the reviewers and the members of the conference program committee for their support in bringing this book to reality. Organizations that participated in the product showcase, sponsors and the local organizing committee (especially KilometroRosso people) are thanked for their help and support for making PLM07 a successful event. Finally, we wish to thank Michela Benedetti for supporting the preparation of this book and of the electronic proceedings.

Marco Garetti, Sergio Terzi, Peter D. Ball, Soonhung Han (Editors)