This book aims at providing a view of the current trends in the development of research on Synthesis and Control of Discrete Event Systems. Papers colÂ- lected in this volume are based on a selection of talks given in June and July 2001 at two independent meetings: the Workshop on Synthesis of Concurrent Systems, held in Newcastle upon Tyne as a satellite event of ICATPN/ICACSD and organized by Ph. Darondeau and L. Lavagno, and the Symposium on the Supervisory Control of Discrete Event Systems (SCODES), held in Paris as a satellite event of CAV and organized by B. Caillaud and X. Xie. Synthesis is a generic term that covers all procedures aiming to construct from specifications given as input objects matching these specifications. TheÂ- ories and applications of synthesis have been studied and developped for long in connection with logics, programming, automata, discrete event systems, and hardware circuits. Logics and programming are outside the scope of this book, whose focus is on Discrete Event Systems and Supervisory Control. The stress today in this field is on a better applicability of theories and algorithms to pracÂ- tical systems design. Coping with decentralization or distribution and caring for an efficient realization of the synthesized systems or controllers are of the utmost importance in areas so diverse as the supervision of embedded or manÂ- ufacturing systems, or the implementation of protocols in software or in hardÂ- ware.
