Scheduling, Sequencing and Assignment Problems with Applications in Logistics

Dear Colleagues,

Optimization problems are ubiquitous in logistics, where the scheduling, sequencing and assignment of activities and resources have a significant impact on operational efficiency. These optimization problems are encountered across the entirety of the modern supply chain: sequencing orders on production lines, scheduling cranes in container warehouses or assigning customers to delivery truck routes. Similar logistics problems also frequently feature in other applications, such as airline crew scheduling, home care scheduling and the optimization of hospital logistics. A range of solution methodologies can be applied to obtain optimal or approximate solutions for these diverse problems. Some examples include metaheuristics, integer programming or simulation-based methods. Moreover, the specific applications that are addressed by researchers often give rise to new classes of combinatorial optimization problems which can also be studied from a theoretical perspective.

We invite you to submit your latest research in the area of Operations Research and Combinatorial Optimization to this Special Issue on “Scheduling, Sequencing and Assignment problems with Applications in Logistics”. We welcome contributions presenting practical applications as well as theoretical results on new and traditional scheduling, sequencing and assignment problems. Researchers from both academia and industry are invited to contribute their latest research.