Guest editorial:“Miraculous and Almost Godlike Tasks”?

“Knowledge is power, and the right knowledge lets man perform miraculous, almost godlike tasks” - Prof Robert Langdon (The main character in Dan Brown’s novel “The Lost Symbol”) It is an honour to write the guest editorial for this special edition of our Journal. This edition commemorates 25 years of academic publishing. It contains articles that are an expansion of a selection from two conferences in 2011. And, our conferences have the same proud heritage. The first one took place in 1986 at the Burgerspark Hotel in Pretoria. As a post-graduate student at the University of Pretoria, I was there, and I participated, under the expert guidance of Proff Kris Adendorff and Paul Kruger, who both instilled the love for Industrial Engineering in me, and who made sure that I realise just how important activities such as the Journal and our annual conferences are for the continued growth of our discipline.