Debra Dobbs, PhD, professor and interim director of the School of Aging Studies; director of the PhD program; and academic director of the Center for Hospice, Palliative Care and End-of-Life Studies, is one of the co-authors of a research paper that received the Commended Paper Award at the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) MIM2025 – 11th IFAC Conference on Manufacturing Modelling, Management and Control in Trondheim, Norway.
The paper, titled "Considering Aging Workforce Characteristics in Production Scheduling: Literature Review and Extended Job Shop Modelling Approach," presents a systematic review of existing research on how aging-related factors have been considered in job shop scheduling models. Building on this review, the authors proposed an extended dual resource constrained job shop scheduling model that incorporates key aging workforce characteristics.
Dobbs collaborated with Marc Füchtenhans, Niloofar Katiraee, and Christoph Glock on the study.
The aim of this conference is to bring together researchers and practitioners to present and discuss emerging topics in modern and future manufacturing modeling, management, and control, following a rich tradition of previous IFAC conferences and symposia in manufacturing and logistics.