6th November, 2024

CALL FOR PAPERS: Thematic Section - Challenges in Production Economics Towards Sustainability and Digitalization - SUBMIT YOUR PAPERS BY JULY 31st, 2025

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Production economics plays a crucial role in understanding how businesses operate, make decisions, and contribute to the overall economy. By analyzing production processes and cost structures, it helps optimize resource use and improve efficiency; informing operational and strategic decision-making in organizations as well as policy decisions.

Within the context of production engineering, it focuses on using economic and management principles and analytical techniques to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of production systems of products and services towards profitable and sustainable organizations. Focused on the interface between engineering and management (Sgarbossa et al., 2024), it involves a holistic and interdisciplinary approach (Balstad and Berg, 2020) to managing resources, processes, and activities to achieve higher levels of performance and a sustainable competitive advantage from a continuous improvement perspective.

Nowadays, addressing these challenges requires a multifaceted approach that integrates sustainability and digitalization into the core of production economics (Missbauer et al., 2022). To remain competitive, companies must adopt innovative strategies, invest in new technologies, and ensure that their workforce is prepared to handle the demands of a rapidly changing production landscape. Managers need to decide in a timely and informed way. Furthermore, policymakers also play a crucial role by creating a supportive regulatory environment that should incentivize sustainable and digital practices. By tackling these challenges head-on, production economics can contribute to more sustainable economies, industries, and companies within a very technology and knowledge-driven future (Oza et al., 2024).

Thus, within this context, production economics is facing significant challenges as it navigates the twin imperatives of sustainability and digitalization (Tiwari et al., 2024; Tsolakis et al., 2023). These challenges are reshaping traditional production and business processes and asking for new and innovative approaches to resource management in both companies and supply chains (Schniederjans et al., 2020).

The Guest Editors and the Editor-in-chief of the Production journal invite researchers to submit research papers with a strong scientific background and practical relevance. The manuscripts should be based on clear and relevant motivation, research goals, and research methodology to offer a significant contribution to the literature. Empirical studies supported by appropriate theoretical or conceptual frameworks with original data and relevant findings are very welcome.

About the Journal

The Production journal (formerly, Produção or Producao) is the flagship journal of ABEPRO - Brazilian Association of Production Engineering. Production (ISSN 0103-6513) was created in 1990 to serve as a channel of communication for academic articles in Production Engineering and Operations Management.

The journal’s mission is to provide an internationally respected stream for original and relevant research related to Operations, Manufacturing, Industrial, and Production Engineering and Management.

Production is an open-access journal and complies with the Creative Commons BY-CC license. It does not charge submission or publication fees from its contributors.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Economics of Energy Management (e.g., reducing the carbon footprint of production activities from a triple-bottom-line perspective (i.e., economic, social, and environmental); adopting renewable energy sources and improving energy efficiency through technological and process optimization, and innovation).
Production Economics of Sustainable Supply Chains (e.g., ensuring sustainability, transparency, and traceability across the entire supply chain, involving suppliers and other business partners to adopt circular economy and sustainable practices).
Integration of Decision-Making Tools and Digital Technologies (e.g., incorporating advanced technologies such as IoT, AI, big data analysis, and business intelligence and analytics into production economics and decision-making processes).
Investment Appraisal and Cost Analysis of Sustainable Technologies, Products, and Organizational Practices (e.g., managing higher investment and operational costs associated with sustainable technologies).
Tools and Practices for a Life-cycle Perspective (e.g., Life-cycle Analysis/ Life-cycle Cost (LCA/LCC), Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), Target and Kaizen Costing).
Market-driven and Pushed Sustainable Technologies, Products, and Services (e.g., aligning new product development (NPD) and production with shifting consumer demands for simultaneously sustainable and cost-effective products).
Project and Risk Management for Sustainability (e.g., aligning resource allocation and optimization and risk analysis with sustainable goals from a triple-bottom-line perspective).
Economics and Management of Innovation (e.g., technology and intensive knowledge-driven research and development; university-industry collaboration; entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems; designing and implementing disruptive products and business models).

Submissions

For author guidelines, please refer to https://prod.org.br/instructions. Authors must submit a detailed cover letter highlighting the manuscript’s fit to the journal's Editorial scope, theoretical and practical relevance, aims, methods, main results, and original theoretical, empirical, and/or methodological contribution.

Submission site: https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/prod-scielo, selecting the "Thematic Section - Challenges in Production Economics Towards Sustainability and Digitalization”.

Important dates:

Submission opens: November 2024
Submission closes: July 2025

Guest Editors:

Antonio Cezar Bornia (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil);
Madalena Araújo (Universidade do Minho, Portugal);
Paulo Afonso (Universidade do Minho, Portugal).

References

Balstad, M.T., Berg, T. A long-term bibliometric analysis of journals influencing management accounting and control research. J Manag Control 30, 357–380 (2020).

Missbauer, H., Battini, D., Trautrims, A., & Tseng, M. L. (2022). Advances in Production Economics. International Journal of Production Economics, 249, 108498.

Oza, S., Kodgire, P., Kachhwaha, S. S., Lam, M. K., Yusup, S., Chai, Y. H., & Rokhum, S. L. (2024). A review on sustainable and scalable biodiesel production using ultra-sonication technology. Renewable Energy, 120399.

Schniederjans, D. G., Curado, C., & Khalajhedayati, M. (2020). Supply chain digitisation trends: An integration of knowledge management. International Journal of Production Economics, 220, 107439.

Sgarbossa, F., Chen, L., Demeter, K., & Gansterer, M. (2024). Perspectives on production economics. International Journal of Production Economics, 109162.

Tiwari, M. K., Bidanda, B., Geunes, J., Fernandes, K., & Dolgui, A. (2024). Supply chain digitisation and management. International Journal of Production Research, 62(8), 2918-2926.

Tsolakis, N., Harrington, T. S., & Srai, J. S. (2023). Digital supply network design: a Circular Economy 4.0 decision-making system for real-world challenges. Production Planning & Control, 34(10), 941-966.