Aerospace manufacturers are looking for flexible agile machines for automated aircraft assembly to overcome limitations of current machines, i.e., inflexibility of conventional large expensive dedicated equipments and the low stiffness and accuracy of industrial robots. Recent research shows (Hybrid) Parallel Kinematic Machine ((H)PKM) has the potential to provide the required flexibility, stiffness and accuracy. It is an emerging technology, which has been identified as the key enabler for next generation manufacturing systems, although its development is still in the initial stage. Obviously, various types of H(PKM)s will be needed for different manufacturing processes, and modular design is required for ease of reconfiguration. Therefore the machine design has to be process dependent and driven by real engineering requirements. The travel grant is for visiting the world-leading research Group of Manufacturing Equipments and Systems (GMES) in Tianjin University in China, and working together with Prof. Tian Huang and his research team for one month to explore innovative design method of PKM/HPKMs for next generation manufacturing systems for aircraft assembly. The project will initially focus on aerospace manufacturing, once successful, it will be extended to other manufacturing sectors, such as automotive and transport industries. To contribute to the UK national priority in high value manufacturing, the success of this project will bring a huge impact to the UK economy, where manufacturing accounts for 13% of GDP and more than 50% of exports. The scope of this investigation is as follows. 1) Assessing existing PKM/HPKM performance 2) Categorisation of manufacturing processes for automated aircraft assembly 3) New PKM/HPKM design and development 4) Novel performance indices for design and production 5) Topological and dimensional optimization method 6) Innovative method of productive system integration for aircraft assembly The main deliverable will be the writing of a post-visit report, which will form the basis for two to three funding applications (at least one for fundamental research and one for applications). Other deliverables will include joint publications and research exchanges in the future.