Guest editorial

摘要

This special issue contains a selection of papers presented at the 5th Production & Operations Management World Conference. As Guest Editors, we are pleased and thankful that Professor Alex Ellinger, Editor of International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management (IJPDLM) offered to host a special issue for the celebration of this historic multicultural conference. The conference took place in Havana, Cuba in September 2016, with the theme "Joining P&OM forces worldwide: present and future of operations management." The conference is a combined initiative by the three academic associations of EurOMA, POMS and JOMSA. The theme of the conference represents the spirit of the P&OM World Conferences, aiming to encourage the P&OM World to join together during yet another challenging time of global change as embodied by increasing protectionism, urgent need for more social and environmental sustainability and workplaces and supply/customer networks being fundamentally transformed by new digital technologies. The almost 400 participants from Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa and Oceania as well as 20 keynote speakers from Europe, America and Asia discussed and proposed ways to help us face a world of such fundamental changes. Attendees participated in 123 parallel sessions during the three days of the Conference in the Havana International Convention Center.