Big data analytics in production and distribution management

Production and distribution are two key constituents of a supply chain. In view of the growing availability of data and advances in big data analytics techniques, there have been more and more applications of data analytics to deal with the problems in production and distribution management. With this in mind, we proposed a special issue on ‘Big Data Analytics in Production and Distribution Management' to report the latest development in this field. In this editorial, we first introduce the background and examine the existing review works on the applications of data analytics to operations management. We then introduce the papers accepted in the issue, and discuss how different types of big data analytics techniques are applied to production and distribution management, including demand forecasting, production scheduling, distribution management, manufacturing management, and supply chain management. Finally, we conclude the paper with a discussion of future research.