International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems: an appreciation

摘要

This is the last issue of the IJFMS under the editorship of Kathy Stecke. The next issue will be edited by George Shanthikumar and Diwakar Gupta, and will have a new title "Journal of Flexible Services and Manufacturing." It was over 20 years ago, in Ann Arbor at the First ORSA/TIMS Conference on Flexible Manufacturing Systems in 1984 that we first started talking about the concept of this journal under Kathy's editorship. It was Kathy who persuaded Kluwer to back the journal and it has been Kathy who had guided and directed it through the intervening years. The first issue appeared in 1989 and up to this issue, Volume 19, Number 4, over 350 papers have appeared.