Continuous improvement in manufacturing and service systems

Due to strong competitions in modern manufacturing and service, continuous improvement becomes more and more critical, which is the foundation for any manufacturing and service organisation to sustain competitiveness. Substantial efforts have been devoted to research and practice of improvement strategies, methods, technologies and implementations. During the 55 year tenure of International Journal of Production Research, continuous improvement has been one of the centre topics. In mid 1960s, using buffer stocks to improve performance of automatic transfer lines was introduced by Buzacott (1967) Following it, numerous studies had been presented to improve production process and inventory systems through optimal design (e.g. Pegels 1968; Hwang et al. 1970; Misra 1975) Along with the introduction of lean manufacturing and Toyota Production Systems, continuous improvement had reached a new phase. Just in Time, Total Quality Management, Theory of Constraints and numerous productivity and quality improvement efforts have been widely applied in continuous improvement practices in various industries and social organisations (see, for instance, Lascelles and Dale (1990) Golhar and Stamm (1991) Forker, Mendez, and Hershauer (1997) and Lockamy and Spencer (1998) In recent years, such efforts have become more and more prevailing and extended to broader areas with new methodologies, advanced techniques and significant successes in many industries, such as steel, aerospace, furniture, as well as product design and human resource management, and many others (e.g. Morton et al. 2006; Kumar and Wellbrock 2009; Colledani et al. 2010; Storck 2010; Benders 2012; Li 2013; Li, Meerkov, and Zhang 2013; Kirkham et al. 2014; Zhao and Li 2014) The 50 year development in continuous improvement has led to substantial impact in both theory and practice of production research. In recent years, significant advancement in information, technology, the fast growing economic activities and the rapidly changing market has generated numerous opportunities for continuous improvement innovations. At the same time, many new challenges have emerged in order to apply and implement these innovations. Such opportunities and challenges have substantially expanded the scope of continuous improvement. In addition, continuous improvement is not only limited to manufacturing, but also widely applied in service sectors, such as health care. The first principle based scientific methodology and rigorous quantitative approach are needed to design and guide continuous improvement in such systems. The theme of this special issue is emerging methods and practices of continuous improvement in manufacturing and service systems. The purpose is to show the state of the art research and applications in the general area of continuous improvement in manufacturing and service, by bringing together researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry, to address the significant advancement, expose the unsolved challenges, present the needs for integration with new technologies, and provide visions for future research and development. It aims to publish original, significant and visionary continuous improvement papers with both solid theoretical development and practical importance, using rigorous quantitative methods and models. Specifically, papers of the following four categories have been included in this special issue: