A few years ago, I wrote an editorial article like this on case studies in operations management (Childe Citation2011), looking briefly at what can be learned from cases and encouraging researchers to publish cases in this Journal. That article proved to be surprisingly popular and after five years, it seems worthwhile revisiting the subject.
What is a case? Simply, a ‘case’ is an instance of something, particularly of the phenomenon under study. In operations management that could include a case of implementing a technology, or a case of changing the design of operations in a facility or a case of changing the way operations are managed. A case could also include a case of failure or of some problem occurring.
From its launch, the journal’s title, Production Planning and (production) Control, covered a large section of what we describe as operations management, the work of operations managers. The work to be done has to be planned, so we deal with the allocation of resources over time; and work must be monitored and adjusted to keep to the plan or at least to achieve the aims set out. Besides these narrow aspects, we deal with operations strategy, design of operations, links with product design and marketing, operations management in specific industries, and the challenges and the effects of operations.
A particular focus of PPC has always been to keep the research relevant by ensuring it deals with needs that emerge from the ever-changing conditions in industry. This means, for example, we are concerned less with the elegance or novelty of the mathematics used in scheduling, and more interested in how the techniques perform when adopted by managers. This means that studies of aspects of operations management in practice are particularly relevant to this journal. These case studies can help us to understand the problems occurring in industry, the difficulties of using a particular approach, or the need for new research, among other possibilities.
The best case studies show how a problem can be dealt with, or show the need for new research, which means case study papers must, like any others, make a critical assessment of the existing literature that approaches the area. Some case studies touch upon commercially sensitive areas, so we do not object to company names being withheld. In fact the name of the company, the industry and the country in which it operates are much less significant than the parameters – such as company size, production volume, variety variability, visibility – that describe which other businesses are likely to have the same problem and where the same approaches may be applicable.
In areas related to operations management, such as computer science, the term ‘case study’ is often used to refer to the performance of a system ‘under’ certain conditions. This can be the understanding in the context of simulation or optimisation, where ‘application’ or ‘implementation’ can refer to the successful execution of software. Such cases are usually based on abstract experimentation in the laboratory, rather than management case studies looking at the experiences of real managers. These would not be the kind of cases that would be welcomed in PPC, but may find their readership in OR/MS journals. There are also industry-based cases that illustrate the use of a management technique which do not carry significant news for managers or researchers, and which are therefore appropriate to introduce the subject in textbooks and training materials.
It is helpful when writers describe a case study with respect to a particular research question. Case studies as a research method and the questions they can be used to address have been dealt with by writers too numerous to mention here. Previous authors have looked at all aspects, including to what research questions case studies can be applied, how they should be carried out and what conclusions can be drawn. Future authors who wish to report cases can easily find a rich source of guidance.
PPC welcomes cases that describe real situations and problems, making clear the circumstances in which existing approaches in the literature were found inadequate, pointing to successful approaches that can be adopted and identifying and establishing the need for future research to be done. In this way, I hope that PPC makes a real contribution to industry by putting forward practical useful research and pointing the way forward for such useful research to be done in the future. Case studies are not the only way to do this, but those cases that illuminate the way forward are a very valuable form of research.
Editor
[email protected]
