Market and customer pressures will drive changes in the way the core manufacturing and service industry currently does business. Customers are increasingly demanding greater reliability of products at lower total cost. Changes in public policy are likely to require plans for increased security throughout the core manufacturing and service industry. Meanwhile, infrastructure constraints and threats from new, more agile entrants will challenge the way industry players currently approach both asset optimisation and customer relationships. In order to position themselves to benefit from these changes, logistics operations need to balance product reliability with asset utilisation more evenly. This will require a shift in mindset. Moreover, core manufacturing and service industry will need to change deep seated ways of working to achieve execution excellence and organisational flexibility.
Simulation is the process of modelling an existing or future system and observing the behaviour of this system over time to identify and understand the factors that control the system and predict future behavior. The value of simulation-based tools is that they give the user the ability to examine alternative designs, decisions, and plans, and allow for testing the effect of those alternatives without experimenting in a real environment, which is often cost-prohibitive or altogether infeasible.
In the industrial area, simulation has been mainly used in the past as an important support for production engineers in validating new layout choices and correct sizing of a production plant. Nowadays, simulation knowledge is considered one of the most important competences to acquire and develop within modern enterprises in different processes such as inbound and outbound logistics, asset strategy, resource allocation, transportation, storage, marketing, etc. Within the visions for 2k-enterprises, simulation is considered one of the most relevant key-success factors for companies surviving, thanks to its predictable features.
High quality contributions are welcomed from academicians, researchers, practitioners and professionals working in the field of simulation in manufacturing and service industries with the aid of techniques, tools, methods and technologies of the application. Particular interest is paid to significant success in the use of most effective technology and supply chain best practices in industries to yield substantial value to the business.
Other streams of interest will be practical applications in the form of quantitative and qualitative case studies based on modeling and simulation. Papers must also have real value relevance and be primarily focused on real time implementation. The target audience is researchers, managers, practitioners and consultants.
Contributors are encouraged to submit original manuscripts that have practical relevance, case studies, and focus on the following or other areas related to modelling and simulation in manufacturing and service industries:
- Holonic and multi-agent systems
- Knowledge based systems
- Inbound and outbound logistics decisions including distribution, transportation, inventory, warehousing
- Sourcing, location, allocation, routing and mode of transport decisions
- Pricing and costing in supply chain,
- Collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR)
- Supply chain performance management
- Supply and distribution network design and planning,
- Mergers and acquisition analysis
- Mass customisation, order postponement and supply chain responsiveness
- System and supply chain dynamics
- Detection of bottlenecks
- Investigations on the supply chains
Manuscript submission: 15 December 2009
Notification of initial decision: 30 January 2010
Submission of revised manuscript: 1 March 2010
Notification of final acceptance: 30 March 2010
Submission of final manuscript: 15 April 2010
