Sustainability

Special Issue on "Competitive and Sustainable Manufacturing in the Age of Globalization"

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2016

Dear Colleague,

With the trend of globalization, the competition within some industries is becoming increasingly fierce. To survive in the industry, every firm must strive to continually improve its competence in one way or another. For example, some firms do not have their own factories, so that they can focus on activities that are more profitable, while others continue expanding their manufacturing capacity to further drive down costs. Other common strategies include: outsourcing, blue ocean strategy, green and lean technologies, applying the competitiveness diamond model, developing next-generation technologies, forming alliances, etc.

In contrast, some studies have shown that even with considerable R&D capabilities, manufacturers cannot guarantee long-term competitiveness (i.e., sustainability). In addition, in the past, support from the government enabled the continued growth of manufacturers in some regions. After such support disappears, maintaining competitiveness and sustainability becomes a big problem. Further, the rise of the Chinese market, and of its manufacturers, bring opportunities and threats to existing firms.

This special issue is intended to provide details regarding sustainable development and competitive strategies, and their applications to manufacturing, for researchers in product engineering, industrial engineering, marketing, and business administration, as well as practicing managers/engineers. This special issue features a balance between state-of-the-art research and more conventional reported applications. This special issue also provides a forum for researchers and practitioners to review and disseminate quality research work on competitive and sustainable manufacturing strategies and their applications, and to identify critical issues for further developments.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* competitive and sustainable strategy: continuous measurable improvement
* competitive and sustainable strategy: statistical thinking
* competitive and sustainable strategy: constraint-focus
* competitive and sustainable strategy: people development/empowerment
* competitive and sustainable strategy: knowledge transfer
* competitive and sustainable strategy: differentiation
* competitive and sustainable strategy: partnering and collaboration through networking
* competitive and sustainable strategy: geographic reach
* the rise of China market and manufacturers - opportunities and threats
* the role of government support
* foundry
* agile manufacturing, lean manufacturing
* cloud manufacturing, ubiquitous manufacturing
* energy-efficient manufacturing
* advanced manufacturing technologies
* design manufacturability, design into manufacturing, design-manufacturing integration
* competitiveness assessment and enhancement
* long-term competitiveness, sustainability
* remanufacturing, green manufacturing
* virtual factory, internet manufacturing and services
* benchmarking
* next-generation factory
* factory automation
* other related topics

Submission

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. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as 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 refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page.



Guest Editor

Tin-Chih Toly Chen, Ph.D.
Department of Industrial Engineering and Systems Management, Feng Chia University, Taiwan
Website: http://tolychen.myweb.hinet.net/
E-Mail: tolychen@ms37.hinet.net