Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue showcases the latest research in the field of production scheduling and planning in manufacturing systems.

The focus is on two important practice-relevant aspects that are the subject of intense research: the consideration of limited capacities and the handling of uncertainty. Planning models and procedures should be addressed. Traditionally, heuristics and optimization models are used. The possibilities of extending these to include artificial intelligence methods should form a focal point.

The papers may frame operational production planning and control as the backbone of production process planning in commercially available IT systems. These approaches are welcome to be implemented in industrial practice.

The following topics serve as examples, but are by no means exhaustive.

• Modelling and consideration of uncertainty through forecasting, inventory strategies, safety stocks, scenario technology, and stochastic optimization.
• Planning improvement through resource-constrained project scheduling.
• Lot sizing under capacity restrictions.
• Scheduling.
• Clearing functions for capacity estimation.
• Simulation and optimization.
• Heuristic solution methods.
• Methods of artificial intelligence:
  • Symbolic and neural artificial intelligence.
  • Simulation methods and phenomenological methods.
  • Mathematically based approaches from statistics, mathematical programming, and approximation theory.

Prof. Dr. Frank Herrmann
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Systems is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• planning hierarchy
• lot-sizing
• scheduling
• optimisation
• (meta) heuristics
• machine learning, neuronal networks
• uncertainty
• limited capacities