A long-standing research area of great practical value in operations/production management scheduling involves devising efficient methods to find the optimal order in which given tasks, events, or actions are carried out, usually subject to certain constraints. Over the past six decades, a considerable amount of research has been expended on scheduling theory and practice. The literature contains many state-of-the-art studies on exact or approximation algorithms to solve a wide array of scheduling problems in various contexts, showing their performance analytically via establishing their computational complexity or empirically through numerical studies.

However, many challenging scheduling problems emerging from new application domains are unaddressed. Therefore, scheduling has remained an active field of research with many potential areas of real-world application, such as manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, etc.

The aim of this Special Issue is to provide a platform to facilitate interactions between researchers and practitioners of scheduling. While discrete mathematics is the commonly adopted methodology to address scheduling problems, further development of such a solution approach is curtailed by the absence of general principles, which presents a major challenge for this line of research. We welcome papers that make impactful contributions in terms of methodological advances or modelling innovativeness in addressing significant and well-motivated scheduling issues. Papers can be theoretical, methodological, computational, or application-oriented. Review articles discussing the current state of the art are also welcomed.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Scheduling in the natural and social sciences
• Data-driven intelligent scheduling
• Multitasking scheduling
• Integrated production, inventory, and distribution scheduling
• Green manufacturing scheduling
• Scheduling with multiple competing agents
• Scheduling in intelligent logistics
• Scheduling in the healthcare industry
• Application of scheduling in social systems or in ecosystems