Last update: October 2012

Mission Statement

The mission of The International Foundation for Production Research (IFPR) is to encourage communication among researchers of production systems and processes around the world, especially by its continuing support of the International Conference on Production Research.

Scope

What is Production? Production is defined as the creation of goods and services. Production research topics that have been addressed by ICPR participants over the last three decades.

IFPR History

Interest in production research intensified in the 1960s. Professor Norman Dudley, former Head of the Production Engineering Department at The University of Birmingham in England, founded the International Journal for Production Research. The first issue of IJPR was published in November 1961 by Taylor and Francis. The journal grew, but Editor Dudley struggled to locate appropriate manuscripts for his fledgling journal. He and the faculty at the University of Birmingham decided that a conference was needed to attract more manuscripts for the journal. The first International Conference on Production Research, ICPR was founded as a result.

The first conference was held in Birmingham in August 1971. It was such a success that Professor C. H. Gudnason agreed to host the second conference in Denmark in 1973. His conference was the beginning of the series of conferences held around the world in August every other year. Conference organizers from around the world have felt the conferences sufficiently important to invest the time, effort and money required to run a successful international meeting.

In addition to the long term relationship between IFPR and the International Journal of Production Research, articles from recent ICPR meetings have also been published in the International Journal of Production Economics, in cooperation with its editor, Professor Robert W. Grubbsrom from Linkoping Institute of Technology, Sweden. ICPR conference Chairs have usually edited the proceedings from these conferences, although a variety of publishers have been utilized over the years. Details of these conferences can be seen in the following Figure below.

IFPR began awarding the honor of IFPR Fellow at the ICPR-14 in Osaka, Japan. The current IFPR Fellows are H-J. Bullinger (Germany), T. Ichimura (Japan), M. Li (China), J.M. Moore* (USA), C. O'Brien (UK), V. Orpana (Finland), N. Tawara (Japan), E.M. Dar-El* (Israel), and A. Villa (Italy).
(*: deceased)

Over the last decade, with ever increasing proliferation and interest in production research, regional meetings of IFPR have also been organized during the off years.

ICPR22 - Iguassu Falls - Brazil

IFPR: Established 1961        *         ICPR-19/Chile 2007        *        ICPR-20/China 2009        *         ICPR-21/Germany        *         ICPR-22/Brazil