Modern manufacturing is driven by economic factors, mainly the need to generate a profit in a highly competitive environment, and by social pressures, especially the need to minimize the environmental impact of manufacturing operations. New and emerging materials, which can be highly beneficial to advanced products, create a strong incentive to find effective fabrication technologies to enable their use. Further, with the emergence of high-speed digital computation, manufacturing has been undergoing a transition from a skill-based activity to a knowledge and information-based activity. This transition has been accompanied by a continuing reduction in the skilled manufacturing labor force, which is compensated by emerging, knowledge-based manufacturing machines.