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This paper aims to deal with integrated planning and scheduling problem in multi-site manufacturing environment and provides a comprehensive review of literature. Classification schemes and various aspects of planning and scheduling problem in multi-site manufacturing are highlighted.

A structured review methodology is adopted to classify the relevant literature. Taxonomy for classification of the problem is presented, followed by review of modelling approaches, solution strategies and challenges faced in multi-site integrated planning and scheduling problem.

The paper is concluded with interesting research findings and a short view on directions related to modelling approach, solution strategy and technique for further developments in the area of multi-site integrated planning and scheduling.

The findings of this study would be helpful for future researchers and practitioners to provide a knowledge base and to further work in this area.

This study attempts to consolidate the diverse literature available and highlight the various aspects of planning and scheduling in multi-site manufacturing.

In multi-sited ethnography, “following” (of, e.g. persons, objects and events) is used as a device to structure fieldwork. The purpose of this paper is to problematize and substantiate the notion of following, illustrating that, when adopting a “following” strategy, the endless number of potential trails one could follow may lead a fieldworker to be both everywhere and nowhere at once.

This paper is based on the experiences and insights derived from a multi-sited ethnography of the strategic collaborations that emerged after the Dutch healthcare reform of 2015. Fieldwork was conducted between 2015 and 2017, and consisted of participant observations, shadowing and interviews.

An approach well suited to studying the contemporary problems that cut across organizational boundaries, multi-sited ethnography is both valuable and more challenging due to: (1) the continuous need to negotiate access, which stimulates the researcher to reflect on his or her positionality in the field; (2) the inevitable pressure it puts on a researcher to “unfollow” their field(s) and to regain critical distance and (3) its perplexing ability to highlight the lack of a whole, unveiling instead a plethora of perspectives across sites which may or may not align.

This paper ends with three key considerations for future multi-sited research endeavours.

Although the metaphor of following can help to structure fieldwork, the practice of following in multi-sited ethnography is not as straightforward as it appears: there are countless potential “paths” to follow, and researchers themselves must decide which trails to choose and when to step back and “unfollow” their field(s).

Polytechnic libraries are increasingly finding the need to justify their costs, but although many are multi‐site, differences between them have hampered attempts to apply standards. This article gives the results of a study carried out at Brighton Polytechnic to identify the proportion of staffing and materials costs which could be attributed to the fact that it operated nine separate libraries rather than one central facility. In analysing costs and benefits, some advantages emerge for the multi‐site library. Financial costs are generally cited as a major disadvantage, but polytechnic library statistics show no correlation between funding and number of sites. The study at Brighton calculated the effect of the multi‐site situation on staff numbers and gradings. It found that this accounted for 36 per cent of the salaries bill. A survey of book and journal provision showed that 14 per cent of the materials budget was being spent on duplicating material across sites. Overall 28 per cent of the library budget at Brighton could be attributed to the multi‐site factor. The effects on capital equipment and space utilisation are also noted. At the same time, it is recognised that costs cannot be considered in isolation from services and that many other factors affect the level of funding in the multi‐site library.

This study aims to propose a new genetic algorithm for solving supply chain scheduling and routing problem in a multi-site manufacturing system. The main research question is: How is the production and transportation scheduled in a multi-site manufacturer? Also the sub-questions are: How is the order assigned to the suppliers? What is the production sequence of the assigned orders to a supplier? How is the order assignment to the vehicles? What are the vehicles routes to convey the orders from the suppliers to the manufacturing centers? The authors’ contributions in this paper are: integration of production scheduling and vehicle routing in multi-site manufacturing supply chain and proposing a new genetic algorithm inspired from the role model concept in sociology.

Considering shared transportation system in production scheduling of a multi-site manufacturer is investigated in this paper. Initially, a mathematical model for the problem is presented. Afterwards, a new genetic algorithm based on the reference group concept in sociology, named Reference Group Genetic Algorithm (RGGA) is introduced for solving the problem. The comparison between RGGA and a developed algorithm of literature closest problem, demonstrates a better performance of RGGA. This comparison is drawn based on many test problems. Moreover, the superiority of RGGA is certificated by comparing it to the optimum solution in the small size problems. Finally, the authors use real data collected from a drug manufacturer in Iran to test the performance of the algorithm. The results show the better performance of RGGA in comparison with obtained outputs from the real case.

The authors presented the mathematical model of the problem and introduced a new genetic algorithm based on the “reference group” concept in sociology. Robert K. Merton is a sociologist who presented the concept of reference groups in society. He believed that some people in each society such as heroes or entertainment artists affect other people. The proposed algorithm uses the reference group concept to the genetic algorithm, namely, RGGA. The comparison of the proposed algorithm with DGA and the optimum solution shows the superiority of RGGA. Finally, the authors implement the algorithm in a real case of drug manufacturing and the results show that the authors’ algorithm gives better outputs than obtained outputs from the real case.

One of the major objectives of supply chains is to create a competitive advantage for the final product. This intension is only achieved when each and every element of the supply chain considers customers’ needs in every function of theirs. This paper studies scheduling in the supply chain of a multi-site manufacturing system. It is assumed that some suppliers produce raw material or initial parts and convey them by a fleet of vehicles to a multi-site manufacturer.

This paper delineates the proprietary contest developed around a highly valued prestige item: a silver roofed tankard owned by a Romanian, Gabor Roma man.

The author applies “methodological fetishism” (Appadurai, 1986, p. 5), the perspective of things-in-motion, as well as the biographic method to interpret data collected during 31.5 months of multi-sited anthropological fieldwork carried out in the Transylvanian Gabor and Cărhar Roma groups.

As the tankard in question crossed the borders of three Transylvanian Roma groups, and thus went through the processes of de- and re-contextualization three times, it is characterized by a transethnic/transcultural biography. This paper pays special attention to the agency associated with the tankard (the social and economic practices, processes and emotions it caused or influenced), the transformations concerning its symbolic properties, and its movement between various social contexts and value regimes. Furthermore, it examines how the analysis of these issues contributes to a deeper understanding of prestige relations and consumption, morality and business ethics, and measures of success in two Transylvanian Roma groups.

This paper reveals how subjects create, manipulate, and represent their identities, and social and economic differences through the construction of commodity biographies and ownership histories interpreted as symbolic pantheons. By combining the terms of Marcus (1995) and Fowles (2006), it argues that analyses based on multi-sited fieldwork focusing on commodities crossing cultural or social boundaries, and their transnational/transcultural biographies, should be defined as multi-sited commodity ethnographies.

A survey of the literature of automation indicates not surprisingly that the use of the computer as a management tool apart from as a provider of statistics has attracted little attention. Chorba and Bommer for example see automation as a question of decision support systems, and Runyon typically regards library management as depending crucially upon a total systems approach. One of the most comprehensive accounts of computerisation in an academic library in the UK similarly reveals an inevitable concentration on the systems. The use of the computer as a part of a management philosophy per se is one which is hardly touched upon, yet in a multi site organisation in particular it can be of vital significance in itself. In the context of the particular problems of this kind of library service it is a general aid to management in a much broader sense.

The paper presents results of a pilot programme aimed at efficiency improvement in a multi‐site factories system for automotive component production. Firstly, the company background has been outlined and main problems of the old manufacturing system have been examined. In order to increase competitiveness in global and turbulent markets a renewed organization approach has been proposed based on total manufacturing management and just‐in‐time methodologies. Improvements in set‐up and lead times, work in progress, material handling, product and process quality, environmental effects, have all been assessed, keeping a quite low project cost (around $4 million).

Libraries wishing to install a network of online terminals to serve a multi‐site library system may be interested in an alternative approach to that described previously by the Polytechnic of Central London (PCL). Like PCL, Liverpool Polytechnic has joined SWALCAP, although for cataloguing not circulation control, and was faced with the problem of providing online terminals in widely‐scattered sites (originally eight at Liverpool but now increased to nine, compared with six at PCL) located in several different telephone exchange areas. The conventional method of leasing British Telecom lines to connect the remote sites to the central processor was considered, but the estimated costs were too high. It was then realised that the Polytechnic's Computer Services Department already had a communications system to serve its multi‐site network of computing facilities and this system could be enhanced to support the library's terminals. Using this method reduced the capital cost by nearly £13,000 and the annual recurrent cost by nearly £5,000. Detailed cost breakdowns are given in Table 1 (a) and (b).

The purpose of this paper is to describe the creation of the Mountain West Digital Library (MWDL), a cooperative regional program distributed throughout Utah and Nevada. Its metadata are aggregated at a single web site. Six digitization centers at the largest universities in both states digitize their own collections and support partner institutions in their geographic regions. Each center runs a CONTENTdm server, and an aggregating server at the University of Utah harvests metadata into a single searchable index. Local control and identity of collections are hallmarks of the MWDL.

This paper describes the technical structure of the MWDL, focusing on the multi‐site server aggregating software from DiMeMa Inc.

The MWDL was the first cooperative digital project to implement this software, and inspired the same infrastructure for a nine‐state project known as the Western Waters Digital Library. In 2005 the MWDL will also become the first in the nation to aggregate distributed digital newspaper collections.

Describes the creation and aggregation of a distributed regional digital library with digital asset management software that is already in use at over 200 institutions in the US. The solutions implemented in the MWDL offer a mechanism for large and small institutions to work together in a cost‐effective manner.

Examines the benefits and problems associated with creating a regional digital library.

This study aims to deal with the multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem (MRCPSP) with the ability to transport resources among multiple sites, aiming to minimize the total completion time and the total cost of the project simultaneously.

To deal with the problem under consideration, a bi-objective optimization model is developed. All activities are interconnected by finish-start precedence relations, and pre-emption is not allowed. Then, the ɛ-constraint optimization method is used to solve 24 different-sized instances, ranging from 5 to 120 activities, and report the makespan, total cost and CPU time. A set of Pareto-optimal solutions are determined for some instances, and sensitivity analyses are performed to find the impact of changing parameters on objective values.

Results highlight the importance of resource transportability assumption on project completion time and cost, providing useful insights for decision makers and practitioners.

A novel bi-objective optimization model is proposed to deal with the multi-site MRCPSP, considering both the cost and time of resource transportation between multiple sites. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, none of the studies in the project scheduling area has yet addressed this problem.