The aim of the 14th annual Industrial Simulation Conference (ISC'2016, the premier industrial simulation conference in Europe, is to give a complete overview of this year's industrial simulation related research and to provide an annual status report on present day industrial simulation research within the European Community and the rest of the world in line with European industrial research projects.

With the integration of artificial intelligence, agents and other modelling techniques, simulation has become an effective and appropriate decision support tool in industry. The exchange of techniques and ideas among universities and industry, which support the integration of simulation in the everyday workplace, is the basic premise at the heart of ISC'2016 conference. The ISC'2016 conference consists of four major parts; the first part concerns itself with discrete event simulation methodology, the second and biggest part with industrial simulation applications, a third one with industrial themed workshops, and last but not least the fourth part, namely the poster sessions for students. The whole is then illustrated by an exhibition.

The ISC also focuses on simulation applications for the factory of the future (e.g. transformable factories, networked factories, learning factories, digital factories) depending on different drivers such as high performance, high customization, environmental friendliness, high efficiency of resources, human potential and knowledge creation as set out by the EU directories. A second focus for ISC'2016 is on new robotics applications.

Thirdly this edition also looks at present day research in urban simulation as an expansion of intelligent traffic and transport simulation and fourthly on new developments in simulation driven engineering.

Further to last year's introduction we continue to also organize an Apparel and Textile Simulation track plus a special workshop on Simulation-based evaluation of interactive systems.