Successful EurOMA Conference in Groningen

The 15th International Annual EurOMA Conference, organized by staff members of the University of Groningen, was held in Groningen between June 15 and 18. About 325 academics from 32 countries attended this conference with the general theme: Tradition and Innovation in Operations Management: connecting Past and Future.

The opening keynote Operations Management: Onward to the Past by Jack Meredith (Wake Forest University), described the growth of Operations Management as a field. The closing keynote What Constitutes Rigour in Operations Management by Steve New (Oxford University), aimed at looking to what is needed for further development of the field.

Among the papers presented a few new themes emerged: health care operations, critical operations management, and food supply chains. Supply chain management and related areas once more had the largest amount of papers, but also some other fields were well represented: international manufacturing strategy, production planning and control issues, lean manufacturing, and ICT in operations.

In the closing session the Chris Voss Best Paper Award was presented by Chris Voss himself. The Award has been won by Amrou Away Sheh and Robert D. Klassen for their paper: “‘Supply chain structure and its impact on supplier socially responsible practices”. The runners up were: Giovani J. C. da Silveira and Rui S. Sousa for their paper: ‘Analysis of the relationships between operations strategy paradigms and performance’, and Giorgia Dal Pont, Andrea Furlan and Andrea Vinelli for their paper: ‘Effects on performance of lean bundles’.

As usual the conference was preceded by the Doctoral Seminar under the direction of Harry Boer and five other faculty. During two days 32 PhD students presented their work (either research design or preliminary results) and discussed the work of others together with the faculty.
The last day of the conference participants could visit Scania, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of heavy trucks and busses with a large production plant in Zwolle, The Netherlands.

The conference dinner, held in the A-Kerk, one of the large churches in Groningen and the “orange” atmosphere in the city centre certainly have contributed to this exciting event.