Editorial

• Corne Schutte Editor: SAJIE Department of Industrial Engineering, Stellenbosch University http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0119-720X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7166/27-2-1585

Abstract

“When you're finished changing, you're finished."

― Ben Franklin 

The Southern African Institute for Industrial Engineering (SAIIE) had its first annual SAIIE Awards and Gala Dinner on 21 July 2016. The three winners in the award categories were as follows:

• Kris Adendorff Award for the Most Prominent IE Professional: Dr Abré Pienaar
• SAIIE Award for Most Outstanding IE Researcher: Prof Sarma Yadavalli
• SAIIE Award for Most Oustanding IE Lecturer: Prof Paul Kruger

These three individuals have made a great impact on Industrial Engineering in Southern Africa, and their footprints are visible in the archives of this journal with several publications from all three winners. Prof Kruger is also the founding editor of this journal. It is an honour to have these dedicated individuals as a part of our IE community!

You may have noticed that we updated the page layout in the previous edition of the journal. This was done to allow space on the first page to capture relevant information, such as submission and acceptance date, standardization of affiliation information, simplification of contact details, DOI information etc. But we not only improved the visible aspects. We also changed the editorial process, to improve the turn-around time significantly, and we hope that this will have a benefit for all authors. We are still dependent on the availability of independent reviewers, and these reviewers sacrifice personal time to review submissions. It is then very difficult to manage the turn-around time of an article when it is in this stage.

Some of you may be aware that Southern African Institute for Industrial Engineering (SAIIE) is busy organising its annual conference. In the past, papers presented at the conference appeared in a Conference Proceeding. However, this year we decided to raise the stakes: papers are shortlisted in the conference review process based on the feedback of two reviewers using the same criteria as this journal, these shortlisted papers are then reviewed by a 3^rd experienced reviewer, and lastly the SAJIE editorial panel will check for suitability. These articles will then appear in a special edition of SAIJE. This means that we will have 4 issues of SAJIE this year. We are currently busy working through the shortlist to do a final selection. What is more, is that it is not only the SAIIE conference from where articles will be selected, but also the annual RAPDASA and ORSSA conferences. This means that the SAJIE special edition will this year also be the edition with the most articles per edition. We hope to publish the special edition in late October.

Back to this edition:

• This edition has a total of 18 articles, with a feature article that investigates he use of Real Options Analysis in making capacity extension decisions under uncertainty,
• of the 18 articles, 12 are from authors with South African connections and the balance from international authors.

If you have suggestions on how we can take this journal forward, please let me know.