Purpose – Research on best practices suffers from some fundamental problems. The problem addressed in the article is that authors tend to postulate, rather than show, the practices they address to be best – whether these practices do indeed produce best performance is often not investigated....

Purpose – To provide an example of the use of system dynamics within the context of a discrete‐event simulation study. Design/methodology/approach – A discrete‐event simulation study of a production‐planning facility in a gas cylinder‐manufacturing plant is presented. The case study...

Purpose – Introduces the special issue, a celebration of 25 years of IJOPM . Design/methodology/approach – Provides a brief review of the first 25 years. Findings – Outlines the philosophy and values of IJOPM , and the developments that have changed operations management practices and...

Purpose – To provide a summary of the founding of IJOPM . Design/methodology/approach – Provides a brief review of the philosophy, birth pains and early years. Findings – Outlines the founding philosophy of IJOPM and the early developments. Originality/value – Provides an introduction to...

Purpose – To provide an outline of an editor's experiences in the early years of publishing IJOPM. Design/methodology/approach – Provides a brief summary of the author's experiences. Findings – Being a new journal, it was found that there was insufficient copy, and this was not helped by...

Purpose – To provide an outline of the experiences of an editor of IJOPM . Design/methodology/approach – Provides a brief summary of the author's experiences . Findings – Notes that it was interesting to observe the way in which topics waxed and waned. A crucial test for any academic...

Purpose – To provide an update on a paper published in 1987 in IJOPM . Design/methodology/approach – Provides an assessment and update of “An agenda for research on the flexibility of manufacturing processes”. Findings – Gerwin's seminal work added welcome rigor to a concept,...

Purpose – Seeks to provide observations on a paper published in 1995. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is a review and observations about the 1987 work. Findings – In the 1995 paper, “Alternative paradigms for manufacturing strategy”, the history of the development of...

Purpose – Seeks to review the results of a paper originally published in 2003 and to evaluate what can be considered still valid and what needs to be revisited. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is a general review and observations about the earlier work. Findings – The focus of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test a method for improving decision‐making at a tactical level – i.e. at the shop floor level. This is done by testing the use of the binary sorting algorithm (BSA) to improve decisions concerning quality improvement efforts among machine...