Track: Operations Research

Abstract

For many years, the Operations Research (OR) discipline has been primarily concerned with economic aspects. The objective of traditional Planning and Scheduling has been mainly considered from a productive viewpoint like optimizing time and cost. However, human factors have gained increased attention since the 2000s, propelled by growing public concerns about sustainable development on the same grounds as economic and ecological ones. Applying conventional optimization models to Planning and Scheduling appears not to seem sufficiently effective, so alternative approaches must be employed to obtain insight into the most critical drivers of socially responsible operations to apply standard Operations Research (OR) models appropriately. The purpose of this study is to analyze and classify how the works dedicated to alternative objective functions by the Operations Research community to integrate human and environmental considerations into production and logistical systems have been captured. Moreover, several gaps in the literature are addressed, and some recommendations for appropriately integrating human and ecological factors in OR problems are given. There were several aspects that could not be analyzed and classified due to a lack of or insufficient research material in these areas. This work can be used as a basis for further research into non-productive objective functions that could bring about new perspectives in this field.