When studyind elliptic operators on manifolds with nonisolated singularities one naturally encounters families of conormal symbols (i.e. operators elliptic with parameter p ∈ IR in the sense of Agranovich-Vishik) parametrized by the set of singular points. For homotopies of such families we define the notion of spectral flow, which in this case is an element of the K-group of the parameter space. We prove that the spectral flow is equal to the index of some family of operators on the infinite cone.

We study the index problem for families of elliptic operators on manifolds with conical singularities. The relative index theorem concerning changes of the weight line is obtained. AN index theorem for families whose conormal symbols satisfy some symmetry conditions is derived.

Exterior tensor products of elliptic operators on smooth manifolds and manifolds with conical singularities are used to obtain examples of elliptic operators on manifolds with edges that do not admit well-posed edge boundary and coboundary conditions.