Vol. 1 No. 1 (2008): January - June
Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Operations and Supply Chain Management. We are an outlet for publishing high quality research and application papers in this field (Production and Operation Management, "POM"). We've noticed that Latin American authors have not written papers on POM topics, or papers that use certain research paradigms, simply because there are limited outlets in English, and Spanish and Portuguese have a limited scope of readership. We think there is a need to communicate new ideas in the area of POM from Latin America researchers to enable a better flow of knowledge among emerging and developed countries. We believe our region has been and will continue to be increasingly more important in terms of operations and supply chain management, with more and more companies off-shoring their operations to this part of the world together with the growth of our own companies. As the map of the world changes and companies gain new opportunities, managers need a sound understanding of the socioeconomics, politics and cultures of the different parts of the world. Such knowledge is critical for developing manufacturing and service strategies that respond to customer needs effectively. In today's world, knowledge can easily be shared across national boundaries. The experience of a company in one country can provide a company in another country with valuable insight. This is not to suggest that the scope of the Journal is strictly Latin America, but rather that the focus is Latin America while the scope will include the international interface.
We developed our original plan for the Journal of Operations and Supply Chain Management with the following set of objectives:
- To provide new and helpful information about POM;
- To provide new theory or techniques in POM;
- To provide researched generalizations about thought and practice in the field of POM;
- To provide creative views and syntheses of dispersed concepts in the field of POM;
- To provide papers in subject areas which have significant current impact on thought and practice in POM and which present challenges for the future.
Fairness.
All of the papers that are submitted to the Journal will receive a blind evaluation by three members of the Editorial Review Board. If a manuscript is unique, on occasion specific outside reviewers will be added to the Board for purposes of review. It is our current plan to include one invited paper in some issues of the Journal. These papers will be identified as "invited papers" and will not be subject to the review process.
Flexibility.
In the rapidly changing world of POM, we must be flexible to meet current challenges and to anticipate future directions. We are not committed to any specific type of paper, methodology, or author, but rather we are committed to addressing all important related issues.
Rigor.
The editors and reviewers judge the papers published in the journal, for their contribution to the improvement of business practices and to close the gap between research and practice. The Journal will attempt to present material at the level of the "thoughtful businessman" and we will carefully attempt to avoid the trap of presenting sophisticated quantitative methodology in a manner whereby only a handful of highly quantitatively skilled individuals can communicate with an equally limited number of highly quantitatively skilled individuals using the Journal as a vehicle. We are committed to developing a Journal which is responsive to the needs of the readership and to the discipline. This will make it easier to maintain a balanced and objective point of view in editorial content and provide content at a level which readers find informative and useful.
Furthermore, the editorial board is committed to the fair, thorough, and rapid review of manuscripts.
We also intend to implement with either Volume I Number 2 or the succeeding Volume a Forum section in the Journal. The Forum section will be for short posts of 1000 to 1500 words on current issues, interim research, or specific responses to papers published in the Journal. Also with either the next Number or the succeeding Volume, we hope to inaugurate a Book Review section which will take current text books and other material of general interest in the field and provide an objective evaluation for the readers.
This journal is intended to be an open source where the electronic version of the journal is available for free at www.joscm.com.br. By doing this, we hope to increase the visibility of the papers published in this journal for academics and business colleagues.
We will give awards to outstanding papers in the Journal. Our current plans are to offer this award once a year (details are being worked out). We are anticipating the announcement of this award so that it can be implemented in Volume II of the Journal. The name of the award is "The Claude Machline Award" in honor of Claude Machline, a pioneer in this field.
It was mentioned earlier that the Journal of Operations and Supply Chain Management was founded because there was a need. This need has been expressed by our academic and business colleagues all over Latin America. Now is the time to express a commitment to this step toward professionalism. We encourage your active participation with the Journal, as readers, as submitters of manuscripts, or simply as observers, commenting on how things can be done better.
Papers in this issue
The papers in this inaugural issue represent the diversity of our field, and future issues will continue this diversity. The first paper, "Changes in the role of production and operations management in the new economy," by Henrique Luiz Corrêa, analyzes how the area of production and operations management (POM) in Brazil should change/adapt in order to remain relevant to the so called "new economy" in the second paper, "Strategy and entrepreneurship: decision making and creation under uncertainty," Igor Tasic and Tales Andreassi deals with the entrepreneurial process and with how entrepreneurs decide to set up companies and structure new businesses without having clearly defined pre-established objectives, and without the capacity to analyze all future variable environments that might have an impact on this business, using the notion of 'effectuation'.
The third paper, "A new kind of operation inventory: the pre-assembled kit," by Claude Machline, shows the effect of a kit system on the supplier inventory and describes how to dimension the circulating inventory and its safety stock for pre-assembled kits.
In "Failure Recovery Management in Performance of Logistics Services in a B2B Context: A Case Study Using the 3PL Perspective", Luis Antonio Figueira Sanches Flores and Marcos André Mendes Primo analyze how failure recovery management can affect the supply chain performance and identify seven factors that should be evaluated for the management of failure recovery in logistics services.
The work described in the fifth paper, "Strategic alignment in the Brazilian automotive chain: the relationships between the first and second tier," by Osmar Vieira de Souza Filho, Ricardo Silveira Martins and Susana Carla Farias Pereira analyse the extent of strategic alignment in the Brazilian automotive chain by examining the strategies adopted by the purchasing function in the first tier suppliers for managing relationships with their suppliers.
In "The impact of quality management on profitability: an empirical study" Alexandre Pignanelli and João Mario Csillag evaluate the impact of quality management adoption on the profitability of Brazilian companies, comparing their performance in the period after the effective implementation of quality with the performance prior to that period. The results of the studies do not give a clear answer regarding the impact of quality on financial performance.
In "Power and trust in reverse logistics systems for scraptires and its impact on performance," Francisco Gaudêncio M. Freires and Alcibíades Paulo S. Guedes describe and analyze the influence of power and the trust between players on performance (efficacity and efficiency) of reverse logistics system.
The Future of This Journal
We designed the journal's flexible editorial policy to help us seek new ideas and listen to our readers. When this journal was announced, there was a shared belief within the Latin American community that the journal would be able to play a major role in shaping the future of POM. That belief is now on trial, and although only the future will be the judge, the veredict will depend on the Latin American POM community's willingness to avail itself to the opportunity.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my many colleagues from academia, business, and government, especially those who serve as advisors, area editors, members of the editorial review board, and referees, for their contributions in getting the Journal of Operations and Supply Chain Management off the ground.
Three excellent visionaries provided critical support: Marcos Augusto Vasconcellos, General Coordinator of International Conference of the Production and Operations Management (Simpoi), Susana Carla Farias Pereira President of Simpoi, and Claude Machline, Emeritus professor of production and operation management at the Getulio Vargas Business School in Brazil.
I am grateful to all members of the editorial board of this journal for their contribution, in soliciting papers and reviewing them for this and coming issues. I would also like to thank the authors for giving the opportunity for this new journal to publish their high quality papers.
This is just the end of the beginning. I look forward to your continued help and suggestions.
Mauro Sampaio
Editor
Published:
2008-06-27
