Emerging Methods and Tools for Production Systems’ Design and Management in the Mass Customization Era, 2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

In the last decade, traditional industrial and market features were replaced by emerging factors, such as variable market demand, the need for flexibility, shorter product life cycles, and mass customization and personalization. This drastically modified the production environment, pressing industrial companies to embrace and implement new types of production paradigms. In this context, advanced production systems rose, e.g., changeable and reconfigurable manufacturing systems, and agile and virtual manufacturing systems, as effective solutions to cope with these issues.

The aim of this Special Issue is to attract contributions proposing state-of-the-art research, methods, tools, and industrial experiences about advanced manufacturing systems’ design and management in the mass customization era. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Manufacturing systems’ design, planning, operation, and control;
• Changeability, flexibility, and reconfigurability;
• Sustainability, de-manufacturing and re-manufacturing;
• Rapid product/process prototyping, development and ramp-up;
• Virtual, digital, and smart factories;
• Innovating for smart production;
• Product/process co-evolution;
• Development of services, and product service systems;
• Human–machine interaction and smart automation;
• Learning factories and smart labs;
• Smart products, services, and product-service systems;
• Digital business models for mass customization;
• Sustainability, circular economy, and mass customization;
• Success factors and industrial best practices;
• Managing variety, product/service platforms, and families;
• Data-driven approaches for mass customization.

Dr. Marco Bortolini
Dr. Francesco Gabriele Galizia
Guest Editors

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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.