LAUSR

In 2017, we have published the 55th volume of the International Journal of Production Research. To celebrate this anniversary, we decided to prepare a special double issue with papers by leading scholars in Production Research. The list of papers presented in this issue is reported in Table 1. The names of invited authors are in the first column in the alphabetical order. I am very happy, because the most distinguished colleagues in our domain have positively responded and submitted outstanding papers to this special issue. Initially we planned to publish 55 papers, but taking into account the enthusiasm and extremely encouraging reaction of colleagues, we have decided to increase the number to 57 articles. All papers were reviewed by at least three referees and were accepted after at least a revision. IJPR was founded in 1961 and is one of the oldest journals publishing research on decision-making in product/ process design, production engineering, operations management and logistics. IJPR was the first European-based manufacturing journal publishing papers seven years after Management Science (founded in 1954). Along with other well-established journals, for example, European Journal of Operational Research (founded in 1977) and International Journal of Production Economics (originally founded in 1976), IJPR is one of most recognised journals published in Europe, presenting high-quality international research on production systems and logistics. T. Fry and J. Donohue, The University of South Carolina, USA, in their paper (Fry and Donohue 2013), have analysed 15 most known journal ranking studies of 147 most known journals and developed a DEA model. Based on this model, they have ranked 32 best OM journals with IJPR ranked fourth after Management Science, Journal of Operations Management and Operations Research. In contrast with the most of OM and OR/MS journals, IJPR offers an overall vision of problems, techniques and applications in production systems: from product design, manufacturing system engineering to production systems and supply network optimisation. Moreover, as it is often stated the reputation of IJPR is based on strong relationship to industrial applications (Dolgui 2012). The main criteria for selection papers considered for publication in IJPR are scientific rigour and practical relevance. The article A dynamic model of managerial response to grey swan events in supply networks by Henk Akkermans and Luk N. Van Wassenhove opens this issue. It deals with so-called grey swan events that can inflict massive damage on production and logistics. Contrarily to black swans, grey swans are not completely unpredictable. The authors present a dynamic model to prevent such events. An empirical investigation concerning the Airbus A380 introduction illustrates this study. Ron Askin with Girish Jampani Hanumantha published paper Queueing network models for analysis of nonstationary manufacturing systems. The authors suggest new queueing network models of manufacturing systems taking into account dynamic demand and time-dependent resource availability. Numerical validation of the models is given on realistic flow-shop and job-shop instances. The next paper by Kevin P. Scheibe and Jennifer Blackhurst Supply chain disruption propagation: A systemic risk and normal accident theory perspective proposes a qualitative case study approach to understand better supply chain disruption propagation phenomena and to provide theoretical insights into this challenging research and application domain. Joachim Scholl, David Boywitz and Nils Boysen contributed to this issue with the article On the quality of simple measures predicting block relocations in container yards which deals with the problem how to minimise the number of unproductive moves in a container yard where it is necessary to remove blocking containers to other stacks when retrieving a given sequence of containers. The article Value of quick response: Selling to strategic consumers with risk preference and decreasing valuation by Yongli Wang, Juliang Zhang, T.C.E. Cheng, Guowei Hua studies interesting pricing issues under risks. They are very important in the modern market, especially for e-commerce. Quick response strategy is analysed; some major theoretical results and optimal pricing policies are obtained.