Each year I invite nominations from the members of the editorial board for good papers that reflect the interests of PPC in terms of addressing the real current needs of industry and developing applicable useful new knowledge based on research in real companies. As anyone who has been involved with such an exercise will know, it is difficult to make such a selection and the outcome tends to rest upon people's interests rather than scientific selection criteria. It is difficult to justify a paper as ‘better’ than another in a scientific manner, but we can claim to identify those that ‘best’ match the interest and focus of the journal.
The paper selected this year draws our attention to the wider responsibilities of operations managers in dealing with the ethical side of supply chain relationships. The Best Paper Award for Volume 21, 2010, goes to ‘Supplier code of conduct – state-of-the-art and customisation in the electronics industry’ by Josef Oehmen, Mikko De Nardo, Paul Schönsleben and Roman Boutellier (No. 7, pp 664–679). This paper looks at the details of the ‘codes of conduct’ used to guide and manage relationships with suppliers in a sample of companies in the electronics industry. The researchers go on to develop a way to customise a supplier code of conduct, using an Action Research approach in a company. The paper reminds us of the need to manage to the strategic and relationship issues that go with operations management, apart from the quantifiable stocks and flows of everyday production.
Other papers that were nominated match the interests of PPC and are worthy of attention. Unusually this year, many nominations were related to one issue, the special issue on ‘Human and organisational factors in planning and control’ (Issue No. 4) produced by guest editors Naoufel Cheikhrouhou and François Marmier. All the papers contain work on real life problems addressed by research looking at real cases. The human factors examined include operators’ workload, planners’ decision taking and motivational and emotional factors in change management and in planning and forecasting: ‘Contextual conditions influencing the scheduler's work at a sawmill’ by Johan Karltun and Martina Berglund (No. 4, pp 359–374); ‘Integrating motivational and emotional factors in implementation strategies for new enterprise planning software’ by Rüdiger von der Weth and Ulrike Starker (No. 4, pp 375–385); ‘Visual scenario analysis: understanding human factors of planning in rail engineering’ by Alex Schock, Brendan Ryan, John Wilson, Theresa Clarke, and Sarah Sharples (No. 4, pp 386–398); ‘Structuring and integrating human knowledge in demand forecasting: a judgemental adjustment approach’ by François Marmier and Naoufel Cheikhrouhou (No. 4, pp 399–412); ‘An empirical study on reducing planning instability in hierarchical planning systems’ by Philip G. Moscoso, Jan C. Fransoo, and Dieter Fischer (No. 4, pp 413–426).
In other issues, ‘Increasing supply chain resilience in a global sourcing context’ by Claudia Colicchia, Fabrizio Dallari, and Marco Melacini (No. 7, pp 680–694) looks at the management of risk in supply chains, developing a simulation-based framework and showing its application to a real case. ‘A structured approach to process improvement in manufacturing systems’ by Federico Mauri, Marco Garetti, and Alessandro Gandelli (No. 7, pp 695–717) develops a new parameter – ‘operating system effectiveness’ – that serves in the prioritisation of improvement activities. A case study shows its use.
All the authors who contribute to PPC are to be congratulated for passing through a reviewing process that is demanding and sometimes frustrating. We thank them for contributing to PPC and look forward to further submissions in the broad area of operations management that will address the real problems of industry.