The ISFA conference, a biennial summit on manufacturing automation and related technologies, was initiated in 1986 under co-sponsorship of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Institute of Systems, Control and Information Engineers (ISCIE) in Japan. It provides a focused and intimate setting for dissemination and discussion of advanced manufacturing technologies and other related fields such as dynamical systems and control, logistics and informatics, and design and optimization. It features synergistic blend of topics encompassing various aspects of manufacturing such as sensing and control, mechatronics, material design and synthesis, process modeling, lean manufacturing, diagnosis and prognosis, and emerging concepts including artificial intelligence, Internet-of-Things (IoT), cloud computing, and environmental sustainability, etc.