Message from the Program Co-Chairs

The series of IEEE Workshops on Factory Communication Systems has become established as a widely known and respected forum for researchers and practitioners - from both industry and academia - involved in research activities concerning the area of Communication in Automation. Because of the ongoing trend to exploit synergic effects between similar application scenarios, in this 7th edition of the workshop a special effort was made to attract submissions from research domains that either are closely intertwined with industrial communication systems or have similar requirements. In particular, the call for papers of WFCS 2008 mainly focused on - but was not limited to - the following topics: industrial Ethernet, wireless and building automation networks; modeling and assessment of real-time properties; security, safety and fault-tolerance issues in industrial networks; emerging design approaches for distributed automation systems and integration issues; information technologies applied to industrial communication systems.