* Business Resources

Operations management (OM) is the function concerned with the planning, design, implementation, and control of business operations in the production of goods and services. OM has expanded from its original factory-centric orientation to encompass the service industry and the respective, accompanying supply chains, with a broad, global range of applications, increasing reliance on quantitative analysis, and the development and the use of supporting computer-based information systems and technology. This book highlights some critical aspects and advances in the field of operations management. Topics covered include investigations in the area of sustainable supply chain management; the application of OM principles to the deployment of field laboratories to address epidemics; and novel approaches to applying operations management in response to increasingly diverse requirements, circumstances, and performance criteria.

This book intends to be a complimentary reference for graduate and undergraduate courses of Business and Engineering. Readers not familiar with Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) and supply chain management (SCM) may have a first glance, reading isolate chapters. Moreover, the sequential order from Chapters 1 to 8 may be more instructive. Readers with expertise on MCDM or SCM will find interesting applications or proposals. The book also presents a systematic literature review, which confirms the leadership of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and data envelopment analysis (DEA).

The aim of this book is to present the terminology, applications, trends, and developments in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). This book has a total of seven chapters that treat the fundamental and future terminology used in PLM, aspects regarding the design, customization, and development of products, products testing, supply chain optimization, and recycling of the products made of special materials.

With the advent of disruptive digital technologies, companies are facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Advanced manufacturing systems are of paramount importance in making key enabling technologies and new products more competitive, affordable, and accessible, as well as for fostering their economic and social impact. The manufacturing industry also serves as an innovator for sustainability since automation coupled with advanced manufacturing technologies have helped manufacturing practices transition into the circular economy. To that end, this Special Issue of the journal Applied Sciences, devoted to the broad field of Smart Sustainable Manufacturing Systems, explores recent research into the concepts, methods, tools, and applications for smart sustainable manufacturing, in order to advance and promote the development of modern and intelligent manufacturing systems. In light of the above, this Special Issue is a collection of the latest research on relevant topics and addresses the current challenging issues associated with the introduction of smart sustainable manufacturing systems. Various topics have been addressed in this Special Issue, which focuses on the design of sustainable production systems and factories; industrial big data analytics and cyberphysical systems; intelligent maintenance approaches and technologies for increased operating life of production systems; zero-defect manufacturing strategies, tools and methods towards online production management; and connected smart factories.

Supply chains are currently globalized and companies operate internationally owing to the fact that raw materials, production processes, and the consumption of the final products are carried out in different countries. This implies high material and information flow, which incurs high costs associated with the supply chain and logistics, sometimes up to 60% of the total cost of the product. Therefore, companies seek to optimize their resources to reduce these costs and improve sustainability in a globalized market. This book, entitled Tools, Methodologies and Techniques Applied to Sustainable Supply Chains, contains 15 chapters that report case studies applied to industrial and service sectors. The authors come from areas such as Mexico, Colombia, Italy, Sweden, Slovakia, China, and Australia. They indicate how managers make use of tools and techniques to solve problems associated with supply chains to reduce their cost and remain competitive. A great effort has been made to analyze this problem, and the methodologies are clearly described here to facilitate the reproducibility of each technique and tool. This was done in the hope that hoping that they may one day be applied in more companies.