Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Enterprise Network Management

 

Special Issue on: "Planning, Scheduling and Optimisation in Manufacturing and Services Enterprise"

Guest Editors:
Dr. S. Arunachalam, University of East London, UK
Dr. Nagaraj, Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, India
Dr. K. Ganesh, IBM India Private Limited, India
R. Rajesh, Noorul Islam University, India

Companies must constantly contend with rapidly changing business conditions. Mergers and acquisitions, accelerated new product introductions, changing customer bases, offshore manufacturing and fluctuating fuel costs are among the many challenges they face.

Globalisation trends have significantly increased the scale and complexity of the modern enterprise. The enterprise has been transformed into a global network consisting of multiple business units and functions. The enterprise is exposed to internal and external uncertainties. Examples of internal uncertainties include success prospects of research and development projects due to technological risks; production upsets such as batch failures and plant shutdowns. External uncertainties include pricing related uncertainties for raw materials and products, exchange rate fluctuations, market size and demand uncertainties due to competition and macro-economic factors.

Planning, scheduling and optimisation are forms of decision-making that play an important role in most manufacturing and services industries to resolve the business uncertainty. The planning, scheduling and optimisation functions in a company typically use analytical techniques and heuristic methods to allocate its limited resources to the activities that have to be done in order to manage the uncertainty.

Optimisation challenges in the enterprise begin to answer the question of how to bridge the gap from mathematical modelling and optimisation techniques to practical solutions of enterprise operations. Mathematically distinct from classical supply chain management, this burgeoning research area has proven to be useful and applicable to a wide variety of industries; for example, pharmaceutical, chemical, transportation, and shipping, to name but a few. There is a need for high quality research which may serve as a "one-stop shop" to learn about various industrial problems and logistics challenges, and solution techniques using recent advances in computational optimisation.

This special issue plans to cover areas in planning, scheduling and optimisation in manufacturing and services and systems development and implementation. It is intended for practitioners from industry who use techniques from a wide range of fields: mathematical programming, supply chain and logistics management, and process systems and operations engineering.

Other streams of interest will be practical applications in the form of quantitative and qualitative case studies based on planning, scheduling and optimisation. Finally, papers must also have real value relevance, be primarily focused on real time implementation and the target audience who are researchers, managers, practitioners and consultants.

Subject Coverage
Contributors are encouraged to submit original manuscripts that have practical relevance, case studies, and focus on, but are not limited to, the following areas related to planning, scheduling and optimisation in manufacturing and service industries:

• Manufacturing models for planning and scheduling
• Service models for planning and scheduling
• Project planning and scheduling
• Machine scheduling and job shop scheduling
• Scheduling of flexible assembly systems
• Economic lot scheduling
• Planning, scheduling and optimisation in supply chains
• Interval scheduling, reservations, and timetabling
• Planning, scheduling and optimisation in sports and entertainment
• Planning, scheduling, optimisation, and timetabling in transportation
• Planning, scheduling and optimisation in healthcare
• workforce scheduling
• Systems design and implementation for planning and scheduling
• Advanced concepts in systems design for planning and scheduling
• Mathematical programming formulations for planning and scheduling
• Exact optimisation methods for planning and scheduling
• Heuristic methods for planning and scheduling
• Constraint programming methods for planning and scheduling
• Selected scheduling systems
• Modelling and managing uncertainty in process planning and scheduling

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page

Important Dates

Manuscript submission: 10 January 2010 (extended)

Notification of initial decision: 10 March 2010

Submission of revised manuscript: 10 May 2010

Notification of final acceptance: 10 August 2010

Submission of final manuscript: 10 October 2010