EDITORIAL

The fourth version of CIIO [1] was dedicated to the role of Industrial Engineering and Supply Chain Management and their impact on sustainable development. [...]research opportunities and new trends identified in the conferences include: * Food security: modeling and design of agri-food and meat supply chains, hierarchical planning in precision agriculture. * Healthcare: public policies in healthcare, cost-effectiveness analysis, diseases diagnosis, medical treatments design, operating room scheduling, home healthcare services, emergencies medical services. * Education: academic departments planning, scheduling and timetabling of academic activities, efficiency analysis of educational institutions. * Energy: waste-to-energy design and implementations, biomass conversion into fuel, photovoltaic energy, electrical systems planning, electricity supply chain. * Industry innovations: business analytics, data mining, organizations life cycle analysis, bi-level optimization for production planning. * Sustainable cities and communities: infrastructure public investment, urban planning, cities and industries, routing and logistics management of electric vehicles, humanitarian logistics. [...]the third work presents a heuristic parameter estimation for continuous fermentation bioprocess which constitutes an application for biomass conversion into fuel, and therefore an opportunity for an industrial scale energy production alternative for Colombia.