The Past, Present, and Future of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management

Abstract

A the fifth editor of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM), I am grateful to all previous editors-in-chief (Leroy Schwarz, Garrett van Ryzin, Gerard Cachon, and my predecessor Stephen Graves), who laid the foundation, paved the path, and led M&SOM to become a premier journal of the OM research community. The reader is referred to Schwarz (1999), van Ryzin (2003), Cachon (2006), and Graves (2009) for their significant contributions to the mission of M&SOM since its inception. M&SOM has become a preferred OM research outlet for articles that are rigorous and relevant. This phenomenal success is due to the support of our OM research community (authors and reviewers) and the unceasing effort of the editorial board members (editors and associate editors) in providing highquality reviews with short cycle time. Because I have benefitted tremendously from the support of our OM research community over the last 30 years, it is an honorable duty for me to have this privileged opportunity to serve my professional community. I am committed to follow the footsteps of my predecessors to ensure that M&SOM will continue its rigor and relevance so as to create impactful knowledge and insights for the OM research community. The submission process, the review process, and the type of articles M&SOM would like to publish will continue in the same spirit as articulated in Graves (2009). Based on the advice I learned from Stephen Graves, the associate editors’ insightful comments I collected from Morris Cohen (chair of the search committee), as well as the many thoughtful suggestions I gathered from various presidents of the MSOM Society (past president Mark Ferguson, current president Serguei Netessine, and president-elect Brian Tomlin) and numerous OM researchers located in five continents (North America, South America, Asia, Australia, and Europe), I plan to encourage impact, further streamline the review process, and promote M&SOM to a larger community, as outlined below. 1. Encourage Impact In addition to inviting special issue proposals and encouraging regular submissions, M&SOM should strengthen its impact. Specifically, I plan to use the OM Forum section to do the following: (a) Invite proposals and high-quality articles that explore new frontiers of OM (e.g., OM and business/ social innovations, OM and digital economy (m-commerce/socialmedia),OMandpublic/nonprofit sector). These articles should describe, classify, and illustrate (to a certain extent) what kind of OM research opportunities exist in these areas and how OM researchers can pursue this stream of research. (b) Invite proposals and high-quality survey articles that synthesize knowledge of certain important or emerging areas in OM so that the OM community can learn of the state of the art on the subject, gaps in the literature, and open research topics. To a certain extent, (a) and (b) can help M&SOM to differentiate itself from Management Science and Operations Research. More importantly, I think that these kinds of articles can help M&SOM to advance the thought leadership of OM research. Consequently, the visibility of M&SOM and the ISI impact factor will improve, which can help M&SOM to be included on the Business Week list and/or the Financial Times list in the future.1