It took us six years to complete this book. Book 1, The Practice of Machine Design - Theory and Methods of Machine Design in the "Practice of Machine Design" series was published in July 1988, and Book 2, The Practice of Machine Design -Knowledge and Data for Machine Design in July 1992, and Book 3, The Practice of Machine Design - Learning from Failure in October 1996. This fourth book is titled The Practice of Machine Design - This is How I Decided.

Note: The above paragraph refers to the Japanese versions. The corresponding English versions are:

• The Practice of Machine Design, Oxford University Press, 1999. This English book combines Book 1 and Book 2 of the original Japanese version.

• The Practice of Machine Design - Learning from Failure, TBP

• Decision-Making in Engineering Design, This book is the translation of the fourth book in Japanese.

We edited this book to clarify what every designer wants to know: how each matter was determined, in what order, what the constraints were, what could change and what could not, what were the givens, what were the relations among these matters, and so on (This information is usually not explicitly written down on the drawings.)

We started on the book immediately after publishing Book 3, and as always proceeded at the rate of having six meetings a year, each participant submitting his article proposal, and everyone discussing them. It took us forever, however, to complete the manuscript for