Hans-Peter Heim studied engineering and business administration at the University of Paderborn in Germany. He completed his diploma thesis in 1996 at an automotive supplier company in Italy. Following this, he carried out different projects on quality assurance and quality improvement in plastics processing at this same company. Since 1997 he has worked in the field of gas assisted injection molding, quality improvement and quality assurance in Dr. H. Potente's group at the KTP Institute of Plastics Engineering in Paderborn. He has been chief engineer at the KTP since 1999. He completed his Ph.D. thesis on gas-assisted injection molding in March 2001.

A surge of new molding technologies is transforming plastics processing and material forms to the highly efficient, integrated manufacturing that will set industry standards in the early years of this century. This book is a survey of these technologies, putting them into context and accentuating opportunities. The relations among these technologies are analyzed in terms of products, materials, processing, and geometry.