A National Seminar on TECHNOLOGY FORECASTING TOWARDS GLOBALIZATION was organized on 06^th and 07^th January 2006 at Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore. During the inaugural function, the Chief Guest Dr.S.R.K.Prasad, Director of CIT, spoke on the need of globalization and liberalization in the Indian context and the importance of cutting edge technologies in the global manufacturing scenario. Dr.S.Dhandapani, Professor and Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering welcomed the gathering. Dr.R.Prabhakar, the Principal of CIT, threw light on the various events being organized at CIT as a part of Golden Jubilee celebrations. Dr.V.Selladurai, Professor of Mechanical Engineering presented the overview of the seminar. Professor E.Ramasamy, the Administrative Officer and Dr.N.Murugan, Professor of Mechanical Engineering offered felicitations. Dr.R.Sivasubramanian, the convener proposed a vote of thanks at the end of the inaugural function of the seminar. About 70 delegates from industries, 25 delegates from academic institutions and research institutions and 25 students, research scholars and practicing engineers participated in the seminar.

The inaugural function was followed by a Technical Session in which Dr.L.S.Ganesh, Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai delivered a Guest Lecture on TECHNOLOGY FORECASTING. His lecture was oriented towards the morphological aspects of product development. He gave simple and practical examples of how products are designed to suit customer requirements. He highlighted the activities being carried out in Technology Forecasting using the Website, which he has developed. He enlightened the participants on the area of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and patent rights. His lecture was very much encouraging and was appreciated by all the participants.

In the next technical session, Mr.V.Mohan Raj, Senior Manager-Marketing, MAGNA Electro Castings Limited, Coimbatore delivered a Guest Lecture on COST OF QUALITY. He emphasized the efforts one should take in producing quality products and also the need for producing such products. He highlighted the concept of Total Quality Management and ISO certification. He spoke on the different aspects of cost/benefit analysis and also described about the types of cost involved in the manufacture of quality products.

After the lunch, the seminar was resumed with a technical session in which Dr.K.M.Mohanasundaram, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore delivered a lecture on MANUFACTURING SIMULATION. He highlighted the importance of simulation in a shop floor environment and also described on the various types of tools being used in the simulation analysis. He also presented a demonstration on the ARENA, a factory simulation software and explained the participants on how a computer simulation model of a shop floor was developed. The results, in the form of graphs and charts were shown to the participants. He also explained, towards the end of his session, how a simulation model is validated with the data collected from a real-time manufacturing system. 

In the next technical session, Mr.M.Sathish from National Instruments, Bangalore presented a demonstration on VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS. He explained how mechanical and electrical components are controlled by electronic instruments. He also showed the participants some slides in which automobiles are controlled by electronic virtual instruments.

All these technical sessions were followed by a National Level Students’ Technical Symposium in which post graduate students from various academic institutions presented technical papers. Their research findings were discussed, examined and analysed by the participants and the interaction and outcome were found useful to the delegates