In today's business environments, decisions become more interrelated. Firms need to have a strategic view on systems as well as a systematic view on strategies. A more integrated approach is called for, bringing together the various perspectives on systems and strategies related to manufacturing and service operations management, and extending it to supply chains and global operations networks.
This special issue contains papers on manufacturing and service operations networks selected from the International Conference on Advances in Production Managements Systems (APMS) in Linköping, Sweden, 17–19 September 2007. The annual APMS conference is organised by the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP), the Working Group 5.7 on Integrated Production Management. The conference in Linköping was organised and hosted by Linköping University. The conference theme was ‘integrating systems and strategies in production management’ and contained over 50 contributions from almost 20 countries. The research presentations covered production management areas such as strategic operations management, linking systems and strategies, modelling and simulation, improving operations and IS/IT applications in the value chain. This issue presents a selection of papers on operations management focusing on how to design and manage operations networks, concerned with manufacturing as well as services.
Eight papers are included in this special issue. The papers cover manufacturing as well as service operations. Some papers focus on design aspects, i.e. the configuration of the network, while others focus on management aspects, i.e. the coordination, planning and control of the network. Feldmann and coworkers report the results from an extensive survey of Swedish plants, discussing both design and management aspects of manufacturing networks. Both Legnani and coworkers and Persson and Saccani discuss configuration aspects of after-sales industrial services. Legnani and coworkers use a multiple case study, while Persson and Saccani use a simulation model to analyse allocation decisions of the spare parts supply chain of a case company. Lavikka and coworkers investigate the coordination of the service process of two business units that have a joint customer, using a case study that consists of three development projects. Dreyer and coworkers and Rudberg and Thulin discuss supply chain planning and control systems for the effective coordination of manufacturing networks. Both use case studies to illustrate the design of decision support systems. Zhu and coworkers focus on the role of design quality as a crucial factor for product quality in manufacturing networks, based on a case study. Finally, Jähn presents an approach for performance analysis in manufacturing networks, using a case study to illustrate the relationships between the network and the company perspectives. All these papers are based on empirical research. The dominating research methodology is case research, complemented by one survey and one simulation model (still based on a case study).
These papers have been extended, updated and further reviewed. This issue will hopefully provide some new insights concerning manufacturing and service operations networks, and foster new theoretical as well as practical developments that can improve the design and management of operations networks. We are grateful to the authors of the papers in this special issue, for their interest in the topic and for their willingness to share their insights and ideas. Our gratitude also goes to the colleagues who served as referees for this special issue and provided helpful comments and suggestions to the authors. It should be noted that the reviewing process for papers with one or more authors from Linköping University has been managed by Professor Jens Riis, Aalborg University, Denmark.