EDITORIAL

Note from the editor

"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 Outstanding IE Lecturer: Prof Paul Kruger

These three individuals have made a significant impact in the field Industrial Engineering in Southern Africa. Their footprints are visible throughout the archives of this journal with several publications from all three winners and Prof Kruger being 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 have updated the page layout in the previous edition of this journal. This was done to create room to capture relevant information on the first page, such as: submission and acceptance dates, standardisation of affiliation information, simplification of contact details, DOI information etc. We did not only improve the visible features, we have also changed the editorial process, to significantly improve the turn-around time. We hope that this will be beneficial to all authors. We are still reliant on the availability of independent reviewers, who sacrifice their personal time to review submissions. It is 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 in the process of organising its annual conference. In the past, papers presented at the conference appeared in a Conference Proceeding. However, this year we have 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 3rd experienced reviewer, and lastly the SAJIE editorial panel will inspect for suitability. These articles will appear in a special edition of SAIJE. Consequently we will have 4 issues of SAJIE this year. We are currently working through the shortlist for final selection. What is more, the articles will not only be selected from the SAIIE, but also from the annual RAPDASA and ORSSA conferences. Therefore the SAJIE special edition 2016 will be the edition with the most articles per edition. We are hoping to publish the special edition late October.

Back to this edition; this edition has a total of 18 articles, with a feature article which investigates the use of Real Options Analysis in making capacity extension decisions under uncertainty. From the 18 articles, 12 are authored by persons 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.

C.S.L. Schutte: Editor