With more than 70 million motor vehicles sold per year the automotive industry is one of the key industries of the world. While originally rigid labour division and paced assembly lines were employed to realize low-cost mass production of automotives, nowadays flexible mixed-model assembly lines make it possible to produce a large variety of customized products. The increased manufacturing flexibility, however, imposes new challenges not only for the design of the manufacturing system but also

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... or the logistics coordination within global supply chains. In addition, novel planning and scheduling approaches are needed in order to manage the mismatch between increased product variety and the need to improve the utilization of the capital-intensive resources. Focussing on the latest developments in automotive supply chains and manufacturing technologies, the primary objective of this special issue is to examine research issues concerned with production and operations management in the automotive industry. For the second part of the special issue four papers have been selected for publication after a thorough peer-review according to the standards of the FSM journal. In addition one erratum is included. The first part with the following papers has