For almost two decades, the Simpósio de Administração da Produção, Logística e Operações Internacionais (Symposium on the Administration of Production, Logistics and International Operations [SIMPOI]) has been a national event of note, and it included the international participation of the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) in 2001 and 2007. In 2015, the Symposium featured the participation of researchers from 16 Brazilian states and three other countries, and the articles nominated for awards were given a chance to appear in the RAE-SIMPOI Forum, organized by Professors Charbel José Chiappetta Jabbour of the University of Sterling in Scotland, Rafael Teixeira of the UNISINOS Management and Business School of Rio Grande do Sul, and Susana Carla Farias Pereira of the FGV Business School of São Paulo. The organizers of the Forum open with a brief panorama about academic production in operations management and point out that the most cited international articles seek to guide research in this field in terms of methodology, especially qualitative case studies. The organizers argue that only two of the 10 most cited works deal with theoretical questions, one relating to sustainable operations and the other relating to managing operations in crises and disasters. The organizers further emphasize the importance of applied research which has a practical impact on operations management. Finally, the editors present the selected articles which have passed the double blind review process and have been approved for publication.
But along with the articles approved from the Forum, there are two other articles in this issue of the RAE-Revista de Administração de Empresas (Journal of Business Administration), which is practically dedicated to the area of operations and logistics. The article "Evaluación de la distribución espacial de plantas industriales mediante um índice de desempeño" (An approach to industrial facility layout evaluation using a performance index) by Pablo Alberto Pérez Gosende proposes an indicator to measure the performance of existing industrial plants and presents a case study of a company in the metal-mechanical sector which registered an improvement of roughly 50% in its spatial distribution. In "The state of research on cleaner production in Brazil", Geraldo Cardoso Oliveira Neto, Fábio Ytoshi Shibao, and Moacir Godinho Filho present the state of the art in terms of research on clean production in Brazil. The authors show that the application of cleaner production is not common in our country and point out that developing countries have greater difficulty in developing practices of this type. This question, however, is essential to sustainable development, and this topic, as indicated by the Forum's authors, is central to operations management research.
This issue's Essay by Paulo Marcelo Ferraresi Pegino discusses the importance of the works of P. Ricouer to organizational studies. Running against the tide of apologies for applied research, the author illustrates the "traps of precocious and simplified operationalization." It is an interesting counterpoint to the classic debate between theory and practice. Rounding out this issue the Book Review about managing events and the Book Recommendations on creativity and music.
Good reading!
MARIA JOSÉ TONELLI | Editor in Chief
Professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas, Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo - São Paulo - SP, Brazil
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Sep-Oct 2016
