Sustainable Production Planning and Scheduling—Models, Methods and Applications Across Manufacturing and Service Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Production planning and scheduling decisions shape how efficiently resources are transformed into products and services, and they increasingly influence an organization’s environmental footprint, social outcomes and economic performance. At the same time, production planning and scheduling problems are becoming more complex due to volatile demand, supply disruptions, decarbonization targets, energy price variability, circular economy requirements (remanufacturing, reuse, recycling) and rapid digital transformation in Industry 4.0. These pressures require firms and public organizations to rethink how they plan, sequence and allocate resources across time, sites and stakeholders, while balancing cost, service level and sustainability. This Special Issue aims to bring together state-of-the-art research that advances sustainable production planning and scheduling (SPPS) models, methods and applications across manufacturing and service systems and provides actionable insights for decision makers facing real-world constraints.

We welcome contributions that integrate sustainability objectives such as carbon emissions, energy consumption, waste and scrap reduction, water usage, safety and ergonomics, equity and fairness in workforce decisions and broader community impacts into planning horizons ranging from tactical planning (e.g., aggregate production planning, capacity planning and lot sizing) to operational and real-time scheduling. Submissions may also address sustainability accounting, data availability and practical trade-offs between environmental, social and economic objectives. Of particular interest are approaches that exploit emerging technologies and data sources, including IoT-enabled monitoring, smart manufacturing, digital twins, cyber–physical production systems, AI and machine learning (including reinforcement learning), advanced optimization and hybrid analytics that combine data-driven prediction with prescriptive decision models.

Papers may be theoretical, methodological, computational or empirical. We encourage studies that propose new formulations, algorithms, decomposition techniques, heuristics and metaheuristics, simulation–optimization frameworks and decision-support systems, as well as research validated through industrial cases, field data, testbeds or demonstrators. Contributions may address single-site or multi-site systems and supply networks, including applications in public transportation, healthcare operations, food and cold-chain systems, energy-intensive industries and circular supply chains with reverse logistics. Studies considering uncertainty, disruptions, human factors and implementation barriers are especially welcome.

Topics include, but are not limited to, energy-aware and carbon-aware scheduling; multi-objective PPS and preference modeling; robust, stochastic and resilient PPS under uncertainty; green and circular production planning (remanufacturing, reuse, recycling); integrated lot sizing, sequencing and distribution decisions; maintenance planning and workforce scheduling for sustainability; AI-enabled, data-driven and learning-based scheduling; collaborative planning, coordination and incentive alignment and case studies demonstrating measurable sustainability outcomes and performance improvements.

Prof. Dr. Atidel Aboubaker Hadj-Alouane
Dr. Malek Masmoudi
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. Sustainability 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.

• production planning
• scheduling
• sustainable operations
• low-carbon manufacturing
• energy-aware scheduling
• circular economy
• Industry 4.0
• digital twin
• robust optimization
• multi-objective optimization
• resilient supply chains
• smart manufacturing