Warm sunshine, cool breeze, wonderful scenery, beautiful sound. Nature provides us with a place to live and everything we need, as a gentle motherly being throughout our lives. We have been developing technologies to get energy from nature, build new devices, and lead a better life. As a result, beyond life in nature, the origins and principles of nature were revealed, and cutting-edge technologies were achieved using them. However, nature surrounding us sometimes informs humans of its existence with a ruthless disaster. As if warning about the reckless development of mankind, it is slowly but sternly delivering a message to mankind.

We have been suffering socially and economically due to an unprecedented pandemic over the past two years. No preventive or therapeutic techniques have been able to effectively stop the pandemic. In addition, due to industrial development and reckless industrial development, the Earth’s climate is changing day by day, and mankind is paying harsh prices accordingly. With advances in predictive technology, climate change and pandemics have emerged as the most severe threats to mankind. Accordingly, the relationship between technological development and climate change began to be considered important, and many countries and organizations started various regulations to protect the environment. Direct efforts to limit the use of materials or energy used in the manufacturing process are required, and the advancement of manufacturing technology through the use of robots and AI technology is also being made.

In other words, the development of production technology, which has been focused on productivity, quality, and price competitiveness, has resulted in an important goal of “environmental preservation” that has not been considered before, and related technology development is being made in a very wide field. IJPEM-GT, as a leading journal related to production engineering and green technology, is about to compile a special issue on the technological response in the production field to climate change and pandemics.

This special issue will cover a wide range of engineering techniques for climate change and pandemics. In detail, the topics covered in this special issue are as follows.

  • Energy saving in manufacturing

  • Waste reduction and recycle/upcycle

  • Smart factory for green manufacturing

  • Robotics for remote/distant manufacturing

  • Appropriate technologies and protective devices

We would like to express our sincere appreciation to all the authors as well as editorial members for their precious time and effort, and to Ms. Sung Gyung Lee of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering (KSPE) for her dedicated support during the review and production processes.

We are also grateful to Prof. Sung-Hoon Ahn (Seoul National University, Korea), former Editor-in-chief of IJPEM-GT and to Prof. Suk Won Cha (Seoul National University, Korea) and Prof. Gyu Man Kim (Kyungpook National University, Korea), Editor-in-chief of IJPEM-GT, for giving us the opportunity to publish this special issue.