https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0527-4716
In 2017, during the celebration of the 55th volume of the International Journal of Production Research we invited leading authors to prepare surveys on the most important issues in the production research. Here, in this double issue, we present the final selection of 33 best articles from around one hundred papers submitted (see Table ).
Table 1. Selected best surveys on the key issues of Production Research and IJPR history.
The first article by Jersone Tasso Moreira Silva, Jose Humberto Ablanedo-Rosas and Dennys Eduardo Rossetto in ‘A longitudinal literature network review of contributions made to the academy over the past 55 years of the IJPR’ offers a longitudinal analysis of the IJPR publications through a main path analysis, a bibliometric and social network overview. The authors analyse most cited paper and collaborative ties within authors.
In the second paper Jian (Jeff) Guan, Andrew S. Manikas and Lynn H. Boyd ‘The International Journal of Production Research at 55: a content-driven review and analysis’ analyses the papers published in IJPR from 1961 to December 2015 by using text mining techniques and identifies 16 main research areas of operations management and manufacturing engineering presented in the publications and the evolution over time of these areas.
‘An analysis of research methods in IJPR since Inception,’ Andrew Manikas, Lynn Boyd, Qinghua Pang and Jian (Jeff) Guan presents a complementary study which is focused on the research methods used in production research. A classification of the methods in large categories is proposed and an analysis of the percentages of papers in each category over the time is reported. Some conclusions are provided: mathematical modelling is the most used approach, experiments are less popular; meta-heuristics and optimisation remain the most employed techniques followed by data mining and statistical methods.
The article ‘The international journal of production research in the past, the present and the future: a bibliometric analysis,’ by Qingfeng Wang and Xu Sun, presents the impacts of IJPR in its fields of research by comparing the IJPR with its top peer journals.
Rodrigo Romero-Silva and Erika Marsillac in the article ‘Trends and topics in IJPR from 1961 to 2017: a statistical history’ report the results of their study of the history of IJPR by applying text mining techniques to the titles, abstracts and keywords of all papers published in IJPR to identify the most common topics considered.
Mohamed Ben-Daya, Elkafi Hassini and Zied Bahroun publish paper ‘Internet of things and supply chain management: a literature review’ where the impact of IoT on supply chain management is analysed. Several classifications of the literature are presented. The authors show that most of studies are focused on conceptualising the impact of IoT on supply chains. There is only a small number of papers with analytical models or empirical researches.
The next paper by Ana Beatriz Lopes de Sousa Jabbour, Charbel Jose Chiappetta Jabbour, Joseph Sarkis, Angappa Gunasekaran, Marcelo Wilson Furlan Matos Alves and Daniela Andriani Ribeiro ‘Decarbonisation of operations management – looking back, moving forward: a review and implications for the production research community’ study the motivations, drivers and barriers for low-carbon operations management practices. Several propositions for future research are suggested.
S.P. Leo Kumar contributed to this issue with the article ‘Knowledge-based expert system in manufacturing planning: state-of-the-art review ’ which deals with research between 1981 and 2016 on expert system applications in handling product variety, execution of process planning activities, machining, tool selection, tool design, welding, advanced manufacturing, and product development. New ways for future research are proposed.
The article ‘Spare parts demand forecasting: a review on bootstrapping methods’ by M. Hasni, M.S. Aguir, M.Z. Babai and Z. Jemai analyses demand forecasting methods for inventory control of spare parts, especially the bootstrapping approach and its statistical properties. This article allows us to better understand the approach and the observed mixed-performances of the corresponding available techniques.
Eren Özceylan, Can B. Kalayci, Aşkıner Güngör and Surendra M. Gupta in the paper ‘Disassembly line balancing problem: a review of the state of the art and future directions’ fixed as an objective an analysis of the state of the art and trends in disassembly line balancing domain. A large recent literature is analysed and classified to show theoretical and practical foundations of this research. Tendencies and gaps are recognised to demonstrate the most promising directions for further research.
Yong-Hong Kuo and Andrew Kusiak in ‘From data to big data in production research: the past and future trends’ identified trends in production data research. They reviewed the past publications and discussed new opportunities. The authors have demonstrated that data processing and computational platforms and integration of heterogeneous data from multiple sources are new and important challenges.
The article ‘Scheduling in cloud manufacturing: state-of-the-art and research challenges’ by Yongkui Liu, Lihui Wang, Xi Vincent Wang, Xun Xu and Lin Zhang presents new scheduling challenges and problems dealing with cloud manufacturing. Major characteristics of scheduling in cloud manufacturing, the state-of-the-art are explained and analysed. The authors also discussed some related scheduling problems in cloud computing, shop floor and supply chain scheduling.
‘A review on optimisation of part quality inspection planning in a multi-stage manufacturing system’ by Mohammad Rezaei-Malek, Mehrdad Mohammadi, Jean-Yves Dantan, Ali Siadat and Reza Tavakkoli-Moghaddam provides a very interesting study on part quality inspection planning. The authors have concluded that the Industry 4.0 trends as well as the integration of plans for inspection, maintenance and production activities are the most important research directions.
In the article ‘A review on supply chain contracting with information considerations: information updating and information asymmetry’ by Bin Shen, Tsan-Ming Choi and Stefan Minner, the authors present their vision of the current state of supply chain contracting. They classify the publications into 3 categories: demand information updating, supply information updating, and information asymmetry. They give some new insights on how supply chain contracting influences information asymmetry and reduces information asymmetry in supply chains.
Nima Kazemi, Nikunja Mohan Modak and Kannan Govindan in their paper ‘A review of reverse logistics and closed loop supply chain management studies published in IJPR: a bibliometric and content analysis’ explain the advancement of the field via the corresponding publications in IJPR. The review study around one hundred articles published in our journal. Many place is reserved to bibliometric and content analysis of these contributions.
Xiaoguang Sun, Rémy Houssin, Jean Renaud and Mickaël Gardoni in the article ‘A review of methodologies for integrating human factors and ergonomics in engineering design’ point out the role of interaction design which takes into account human factors and ergonomics. Man–machine systems of engineering design are considered. The authors analyse this domain of complex machine, equipment, system, and simple product design, focus their attention on interactions between the system and its user, present the current state of the art in this area and give suggestions of new research directions.
The article ‘On the consideration of carbon emissions in modelling-based supply chain literature: the state of the art, relevant features and research gaps’ by Amina Chelly, Imen Nouira, Yannick Frein and Atidel B. Hadj-Alouane analyses the mathematical models developed for the problem of low-carbon supply chain management. To categorise the literature, the logistic decisions studied within the developed models are used: operational management, technology investment and supply chain design and coordination. Modelling of carbon emissions is considered as a crucial task. Techniques to approximate carbon emissions are analysed. Research perspectives are presented.
The paper ‘The job sequencing and tool switching problem: state-of-the-art literature review, classification, and trends,’ by Dorothea Calmels offers a comprehensive review of the literature on the job sequencing and tool switching problem. A new framework is used for papers classification. The author demonstrates that real-world situations are not fully covered. New research directions are suggested.
The paper ‘A state of the art and comparison of approaches for performance measurement systems definition and design,’ by Michel Stella Ravelomanantsoa, Yves Ducq and Bruno Vallespir presents an exhaustive analysis of the state of the art on approaches dedicated to designing specific sets of performance indicators grouped in a coherent system named the performance measurement system of enterprise. Such a system helps decision makers in the industry to make the best possible decisions in a complex environment over time.
The paper ‘An overview of current technologies and emerging trends in factory automation’ by Mariagrazia Dotoli, Alexander Fay, Marek Miśkowicz and Carla Seatzu reports an overview of recent advances in modern factory automation. Major methods and technologies are analysed: vertical integration; distributed control; smart sensors; networked control; self-organisation; semantic models; new engineering methods of factory automation, etc.
Lucas Martins Ikeziri, Fernando Bernardi de Souza, Mahesh C. Gupta and Paula de Camargo Fiorini in their paper ‘Theory of constraints: review and bibliometric analysis’ analyse this domain of Production Research and conclude that IJPR has the highest concentration of published work on the theory of constraints among all the most known international journals in our field and propose some perspectives for the future research.
The article ‘Leanness measurement methods in manufacturing organisations: a systematic review’ by Paola Cocca, Filippo Marciano, Marco Alberti and Debora Schiavini deals with monitoring and control of lean implementations in industry. The methods used to measure leanness are analysed. The advantages and drawbacks of each approach are presented. New definitions are developed. Some further research is suggested.
Dmitry Ivanov and Alexandre Dolgui in ‘Low-Certainty-Need (LCN) supply chains: a new perspective in managing disruption risks and resilience’ propose a novel approach to supply chain management integrating the concepts of efficiency and resilience. It is based on the two following principles: design of supply chains able to efficiently operate regardless of environmental changes; reduction of re-planning efforts for disruption recovery.
David Bogataj and Marija Bogataj in the paper ‘NPV approach to material requirements planning theory – a 50-year review of these research achievements’ provide an analysis of the Material Requirements Planning Theory. The authors presented the development of this theory since 1967 when Prof. Robert W. Grubbström published his first economic article on Laplace Transforms in production and investments.
The article ‘Agile manufacturing: an evolutionary review of practices,’ by Angappa Gunasekaran, Yahaya Y. Yusuf, Ezekiel O. Adeleye, Thanos Papadopoulos, Dharma Kovvuri and Dan’Asabe G. Geyi, proposes a review of the literature on agile manufacturing based on the evolution of manufacturing agility. The attributes and drivers of agile manufacturing are discussed. The skills deployable for agile manufacturing are identified. The possible contributions of new technologies of big data, blockchain, and Internet of Things are discussed.
Afshin Jamshidi, Farzad Jamshidi, Daoud Ait-Kadi and Amar Ramudhin in the paper ‘A review of priority criteria and decision-making methods applied in selection of sustainable city logistics initiatives and collaboration partners’ consider multi-criteria approaches for sustainable city logistics design and management, logistics initiatives and collaboration partner selection problems, taking into account simultaneously technical, social, environmental and economic criteria.
Yasamin Eslami, Michele Dassisti, Mario Lezoche and Hervé Panetto in the paper ‘A survey on sustainability in manufacturing organisations: dimensions and future insights’ analyse the problem of sustainability of manufacturing systems and try to respond to the questions: ‘How sustainability is defined through its dimensions?’ and ‘What sub-dimensions can denominate sustainable manufacturing?’.
The paper ‘Survey and classification of operational control problems in discrete event logistics systems’ by Timothy Sprock, Conrad Bock and Leon F. McGinnis, proposes a review and categorisation of the literature on operational control of discrete event logistics systems.
Isabel Mundi, M. M. E. Alemany, Raúl Poler and Vicente S. Fuertes-Miquel in their paper ‘Review of mathematical models for production planning under uncertainty due to lack of homogeneity: proposal of a conceptual model’ compare different types of models and propose a generic approach to analyse the literature about production planning models dealing with the product homogeneity uncertainty.
‘How IJPR has addressed ‘lean’: a literature review using bibliometric tools’ by Maria Pia Ciano, Rossella Pozzi, Tommaso Rossi and Fernanda Strozzi, consider all the publications in IJPR on Lean and use a dynamic quantitative bibliometric method to evaluate the tendencies in this domain over time.
Mohammad Daneshvar Kakhki and Vidyaranya B. Gargeya in the paper ‘Information systems for supply chain management: a systematic literature analysis’ study the current status and propose the future developments in the research domain of the impact of information systems on the supply chain management.
Shenle Pan, Damien Trentesaux, Eric Ballot and George Q. Huang in the paper ‘Horizontal collaborative transport: survey of solutions and practical implementation issues,’ study the publications on the horizontal collaborative transport over the past few years to identify research trends and gaps. This is a relatively new domain of research in sustainable logistics.
Ilenia Zennaro, Serena Finco, Daria Battini and Alessandro Persona in the article ‘Big size highly customised product manufacturing systems: a literature review and future research agenda,’ analyse the specificity of the manufacturing systems for highly customised products, produced with low volumes and long delivery times under make-to-order and engineering-to-order policies.
In 2018 and 2019, we have published several other special issues edited by the Associate Editors of the journal. The objective was to explain the journal policy in each area, priority topics for the next years, Editor’s vision of the area history and perspectives. A special double issue dedicated to the 55th volume anniversary with invited papers by leading scholars in Production Research was also published (Dolgui Citation2018).
Now, we publish this issue with the best surveys in Production Research. The papers published here are considered as nominated to the best survey awards of IJPR. The editors will select the final list of awarded papers from the papers published in this issue by the end of 2019. I hope you will appreciate the papers of this special issue.
Finally, I invite you to submit your best research to the journal. The current policy of the journal is as follows:
IJPR publishes major scientific results on topics which are of general interest for the Production Research community as a whole. Authors should show perfect knowledge of the state of the art in Production Research, propose new scientific results, compare them to the state of the art, explain their applicability to practice and give managerial insights. Papers should be presented clearly and accessible by all members of the Production Research community (at least the introduction, problem statement and managerial insights). The problems considered should be relevant for industry or services.
Only major scientific results in decision aid techniques with new convincing applications in Production Systems and Logistics are published. Please avoid submitting heuristics on academic problems without real life origins and serious validation (internal as well as external).
For IJPR papers, the following elements are mandatory:
− an exhaustive analysis of Production Research literature;
− a novel decision aid model for design or management of Production Systems and Logistics, the model should be explained for a wide audience in Production Research;
− comparisons with the state of the art;
− discussion on real life applications of the proposed approach in Production Systems and Logistics;
− managerial insights for decision makers in industry;
− research perspectives.
IJPR search for new research directions, new approaches and cutting edge results on the problems inspired from real life situations in many enterprises. Sustainability, Risk, Disruption management, Pricing, Lean, Digital twins, Blockchains, Industry 4.0, Cyber-Physical systems, Cloud manufacturing, Smart enterprise, Reconfigurable manufacturing systems, Artificial intelligence applications in Manufacturing and Logistics are examples of such topics for IJPR. Surveys, special issues, focused key results by leading scholars working on these topics are welcome.
IJPR is open for contributions from Mechanical Engineering community. Decision aid results for product/process design, design and management of Production Systems and Logistics by colleagues from Mechanical, Manufacturing and Industrial engineering are welcome.
ORCID
Alexandre Dolgui http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0527-4716
Related Research Data
Reference
- Dolgui, A. 2018. “Leading Scholars in Production Research for the 55th Volume Anniversary of IJPR.” International Journal of Production Research 56 (1–2): 1–9. doi:10.1080/00207543.2018.1429119.