The strong roots of this TC are in the SMC ’97 conference that was held in Orlando. It was actually the very first SMC conference where I have attended. I was full of enthusiasm and met a few interesting colleagues during the four conference days: Prof. Hugh VanLandingham, Prof. Mark Embrechts, and Prof. Akimoto Kamiya. On one afternoon, Prof. Krishna Pattipati (Vice President, Technical Activities, SMCS) organized an open meeting for people who were interested in technical activities and possible technical committees within the SMCS. In that fruitful meeting, I found out that Hugh and I shared considerable interests in the broad field of Industrial Applications—particularly the use of soft computing in industrial applications.

After the “Pattipati meeting”, we established the Industrial Applications TC (IATC) in the beginning of 1998; Hugh was the Founding Chair and I was a member. Later on, Mark and Akimoto joined our TC, and also Prof. Yasuhiko Dote. We had a small TC with an international group of members—but what could we do together?

We all were interested in establishing and running a new workshop series “Soft Computing in Industrial Applications” (SMCia). That was, indeed, the initial motivation for our collaboration. And now, after four successful SMCia workshops, we are establishing a series of sister workshops “Adaptive and Learning Systems” (SMCals). It has never been a problem to find devoted organizers for the SMCia meetings (SMCia/99 in Finland, SMCia/01 in Virginia, SMCia/03 in New York, SMCia/05 in Finland, SMCia/07 in Germany, and SMCia/09 possibly in Japan).

Over the past six years, the IATC has also been developing and promoting the new concept “Fusion of Soft Computing and Hard Computing”. This term was invented in 1998 (SMC ’98 in La Jolla), the first review paper on the topic was presented in 1999 (SMC ’99 in Tokyo), and in 2002 a special issue on “Fusion of Soft Computing and Hard Computing in Industrial Applications” was published in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS—PART C: APPLICATIONS AND REVIEWS. Moreover, several invited sessions, panel discussions, and tutorials were organized for SMC-sponsored meetings in Finland, Japan, and the United States.

The unusually broad topic of this TC is a great opportunity, because we can direct the emphasis of our technical activities within the vast area of Industrial Applications. We are just starting new activities related to the fresh field of Artificial Immune Systems and Their Applications. Presently, the IATC has 10 members from Finland (2), Germany (1), Japan (2), UK (1), and USA (4).

We are proud to be members of the IATC and the multi-disciplinary SMC Society!