The first conference was held in Birmingham in August 1971. It was such a success that Professor C. H. Gudnason agreed to host the second conference in Denmark in 1973. His conference was the beginning of the series of conferences held around the world in August every other year. Conference organizers from around the world have felt the conferences sufficiently important to invest the time, effort and money required to run a successful international meeting.
In addition to the long term relationship between IFPR and the International Journal of Production Research, articles from recent ICPR meetings have also been published in the International Journal of Production Economics, in cooperation with its editor, Professor Robert W. Grubbsrom from Linkoping Institute of Technology, Sweden. ICPR conference Chairs have usually edited the proceedings from these conferences, although a variety of publishers have been utilized over the years. Details of these conferences can be seen in dedicated page.
IFPR began awarding the honor of IFPR Fellow at the ICPR-14 in Osaka, Japan. The current IFPR Fellows are H-J. Bullinger (Germany), C. Dagli (USA), E.M. Dar-El* (Israel), R. Grubbstrom (Sweden), C-Y. Huang (Taiwan), T. Ichimura (Japan), K. Ishii (Japan), M. Li (China), J.M. Moore* (USA), S.Y. Nof (USA), C. O’Brien (UK), V. Orpana (Finland), D. Popescu (Romania), L. Quezada (Chile), D. Spath (Germany), N. Tawara* (Japan), A. Villa (Italy) and V.M. Virolainen (Finland).
(*: deceased)
Over the last decade, with ever increasing proliferation and interest in production research, regional meetings of IFPR have also been organized during the off years.