Special Issue: Smart and Sustainable Production, Logistics, and Supply Chain: Trends, Challenges, Methods, and Best Practices

In response to the great success of our previous special issue of Annals of Operations Research (ANOR) entitled “Smart and Sustainable Supply Chain and Logistics: Trends, Challenges, Methods, and Best Practices,” which attracted a large number of submissions from scholars all over the world, we would like to continue this interesting topic, and call for papers for the next special issue.

To disseminate current research from academia and the wider community on production engineering, maintenance, supply chain management, and logistics, aiming to meet challenges of turbulent environment and sustainability goals with the support of emerging smart technologies, operations research, and recent advances in mathematics, the 17th International Congress on Logistics and SCM Systems (ICLS 2023) will be celebrated in Seoul, South Korea (http://www.icls2023.kr/), and the 4th International Conference on Intelligent Systems in Production Engineering and Maintenance ISPEM 2023 will be celebrated in Wroclaw, Poland (https://www.ispem.pwr.edu.pl/).

On that occasion, ANOR welcomes submissions of articles to a special issue on these topics, called: “Smart and Sustainable Production, Logistics, and Supply Chain: Trends, Challenges, Methods, and Best Practices II.”

The increasing digitalization of processes in companies and the need for more integrated and seamless cooperation in supply chains and production currently belong to the dominant trends in the business world. Furthermore, the shift towards Industry 4.0 triggers the application of new solutions and methods for innovative plants and supply chain. The pressure for reducing CO2 emissions and more resource-efficient business and waste management models strongly influence the organization of operations on both a local and a global scale. Integration of physical and cyber systems within the framework of Industry 4.0, the application of advanced artificial intelligence tools, is necessary in order to achieve more environmentally friendly, efficient, safe logistics, supply chain, inventory, and production operations.

The continuously expanding pools of managerial data and the sets of environmental and technical constraints have triggered the development of new mathematical models that ought to be the foundations of most advanced simulation and decision-making techniques, which are just what the business and economic areas of logistics, supply chain, inventory, and production management urgently require. All of these emerging problems face the high obstacle of uncertainty. All those smart processes of learning, improvement, optimization, and control under uncertainty are core purposes of modern Operations Research, Data Mining, Analytics, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which, therefore, will be discussed, used, and refined in this special issue.

This special issue will cover a wide range of subjects in the fields of production management, logistics, supply chain, and related topics that employ and further create advanced Operations Research (OR) and Management Science (MS) approaches, theories, and methods. The potential scope therefore includes, but is not limited to, the following areas, methodologies and challenges of Logistics (L), Supply Chain (SC), Production Engineering (PE), and Maintenance (M):

Smart L, SC, PE, and M:

• Recent advances in OR/MS, Data Mining, Analytics, Machine Learning, and AI

• Digitalization in Production Engineering and Maintenance

• Data Mining and Analytics applications

• Machine Learning and AI applications

• IoT applications

• Industry 4.0 applications

• Interval, polyhedral, ellipsoidal, fuzzy, rough sets, grey systems, and stochastic goals

• Future intelligent transportation systems

• Conic scalarization in multi-choice and -objective transportation problems

• Multi-objective two-stage grey transportation problems

• Multimodal processes approach

• IM with variable holding cost, multi-level trade-credit policy

• IM with stock-dependent demand and variable holding cost for deteriorating items

• IM with shortage under stochastic deterioration

• PM with overtime and outsourcing

• L, SCM, IM for humanitarian applications

• L, SCM, IM, and PM in social media and networks

• L, SCM, IM, and PM in the Cloud

• TOPSIS method

• Modelling, simulation, and optimization

• Stochastic calculus, pricing, and optimal control

Sustainability in L, SC, PE, and M:

• Closed-loop SC (reuse, recycling, remanufacturing)

• Waste management

• Green L

• Green sourcing and procurement

• Urban mobility

• Green routing with time windows and intermediate depots

• Reverse L

• Human factors

• Sustainability assessment

• Challenges in a circular economy

The use of methods from modern Operations Research in logistics, supply chain, inventory, and production are a prerequisite for any paper submitted to this special issue to enter the reviewing process.

Call for Papers Flyer: Smart and Sustainable Production, Logistics, and Supply Chain: Trends, Challenges, Methods, and Best Practices