CALL FOR PAPERS
International Journal of Production Economics
Special Issue
onMeta-Heuristics for Manufacturing Scheduling and Logistics Problems
Special Issue Guest Editors
Ching-Jong Liao
Department of Industrial Management
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
Taipei, Taiwan
Mitsuo Gen
Fuzzy Logic Systems InstituteFukuoka 820-0067, Japan
Hanyang University, Korea
Manoj Kumar Tiwari
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management
Indian Institute of Technology
Kharagpur - 721302, India
Pei-Chann Chang
Department of Information Management
Yuan Ze University
Chung-Li, Taiwan

Introduction
Nowadays, customer demand for order variety, short-lead time, and fastdelivery has created a great impact on manufacturing problems such as
production scheduling, job sequencing, vehicle routing, bin-packing, andloading. The related problems of manufacturing scheduling and logistics
support are even more crucial than ever. Traditional approaches are incapable

of dealing with the challenges of such intractable problems. There is a need forthe development of new solution methods to address these challenging issues.
Meta-heuristics based on ant colony optimization, evolutionary algorithms,
particle swarms etc. provide a new problem-solving paradigm for academic
researchers and industrial practitioners.
Manufacturing scheduling and logistics problems are practical decision-making
problems in organizations and factories. Scheduling and transportation
logistics problems are notoriously difficult problems in the domains of
production economics, operations research, optimization, and computerscience. Due to their theoretical challenges and practical values, schedulingand logistics problems have attracted a considerable amount of researchattention in the literature. However, traditional approaches can only solve
small-scale scheduling or logistics problems optimally as the computationalefforts to solve large-sized problems are beyond the capability ofcontemporary computational resources. This limitation has prompted
researchers and practitioners to develop problem-specific heuristics or use
meta-heuristics to solve such problems quickly with reasonable solution
quality.
This special issue of the International Journal of Production Economics (IJPE)
is devoted to publishing new and significant results on developing new
approaches that combine meta-heuristics with other problem-solving
paradigms to yield highly effective solution methods for manufacturingscheduling and logistics problems. In view of the recent advances andbreakthroughs in Computational Intelligence, various techniques such as
Neural Networks, Fuzzy Theory, and Evolutionary Algorithms can be deployed
to develop more reliable and accurate solution approaches. New tools,techniques, or models that can be applied to cope with manufacturingscheduling and logistics problems are all welcomed. Potential topics include,
but are not limited to, the following:•••••

Application of ant colony optimization, evolutionary algorithms, andrelated meta-heuristics (e.g., particle swarm, artificial immune system,
DNA approach, bee system etc.) to deal with manufacturing schedulingand logistics problems
Design and development of conventional optimization based heuristics
Design and development of new meta-heuristics or bio-inspired
algorithms
Solving practical problems using heuristics, meta-heuristics, or
hyper-heuristics
Methods for dealing with stochastic, dynamic, and multi-objectiveproblems

••Comparisons with other meta-heuristics (tabu search, local searchbased methods etc.)
Hybrid methods and hyper-heuristics

Manuscript Preparation and Submission
To prepare their manuscripts, authors are asked to closely follow the“Instructions to Authors” that is presented at the back of any recent issue of theIJPE.
Authorsshouldsubmit
theirpapers
viatheEES
http://www.ees.elsevier.com/ijpe/
andselect“SpecialIssue:Meta-heuristics for Manufacturing Scheduling and Logistics Problems” when
asked to indicate the “Article Type” in the submission process. Submitted
papers should not have been previously published nor be currently underconsideration for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts will be refereed
according to the standards of IJPE.
Publication Schedule
INFORMATIONDEADLINE

Manuscript submission

15 October 2011

Reviewer reports

1 February 2012

Revised paper submission

30 April 2012

Final manuscript submissions to publisher

15 July 2012

Special Issue Guest Editors
Ching-Jong Liao PhD
Professor
Department of Industrial Management
National Taiwan University of Science andTechnology, Taipei, Taiwan
Tel: +886-2-27303277
E-mail: yklin@mail.ntust.edu.tw

Manoj Kumar Tiwari PhD
Department of Industrial Engineeringand Management
Indian Institute of Technology,
Kharagpur - 721302, INDIA
Tel: +91-3222-283746
E-mail: mkt09@hotmail.com

Mitsuo Gen PhD
Professor
Fuzzy Logic Systems InstituteFukuoka 820-0067, Japan
Tel: +81-948-24-2771
Dept. of Industrial & Management Eng.
Hanyang University, Korea
E-mail: mitsuoGen@gmail.com

Pei-Chann Chang PhD
Professor
Department of Information
ManagementYuan Ze University
Chung-Li, Taiwan
Tel: +886-3-4638909
E-mail: iepchang@saturn.yzu.edu.tw