EDITORIAL

Note from the editor

"All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else." - Mae West, Wit & Wisdom of Mae West.

The past two months, I have come to realise that being the newly appointed editor of this journal is like taking up a new lover - it consumes attention, time and energy at times when one can ill afford it! I also started to understand why our previous editor, Prof Susan Adendorff, had to make the difficult decision to move on - she had reached the time in her career where having to be the editor of this journal as well, was no longer feasible, and she had to make the difficult decision to hand over this role - therefore my "tongue in cheek" quote above. I am honoured that she approached me for this role, and I hope that I will be able to equal her dedication to this journal, and fulfil all expectations of the academic community that we are serving.

When one takes over a new role, it is always dangerous to make too many changes too soon. Prof Adendorff changed the journal from a printed publication to a fully on-line Open Access journal, and we can already see the positive impact this has had. The following changes are envisaged:

•  Printed issues are currently distributed to all SAIIE members. However, the academic contributions in this journal is of limited value to all SAIIE members, and we prefer to rather focus our attention on the on-line edition, because we can reach a much wider audience on-line, and rather spend the money saved with the printed edition on to improving the quality and frequency of the journal.
•  Printed editions will in future become a subscription option, and this edition is the last printed edition to be distributed to all SAIIE members.
•  Three issues are currently issued per year, and we have a significant backlog in submissions, making a fourth issue per year feasible. However, the editorial process needs to become more scalable to handle the increased editorial load. A more actively involved section editor model will be introduced in 2014 to increase our scalability to handle more submissions per year.
•  The editor and section editors also have a desire and need to publish in this journal. You will notice that the editorial policy in the back of this issue has been updated to address this.

This issue contains articles that have mostly been managed through the review process by Prof Adendorff, and she was instrumental in the finalisation of this issue. Seven of the sixteen articles are from South African authors, the balance from international authors.

If you have suggestions on how we can take this journal forward, please let me know. This journal is there to serve the Industrial Engineering academic community, and we need to take this forward with the inputs of the community.

CSL Schutte
Editor