Machine scheduling problems in production: A tertiary study

•Presents a systematic review of 129 literature reviews on machine scheduling problems in production.•Develops a conceptual framework that considers main attributes of machine scheduling problems in production.•Presents a comprehensive overview of the state-of-knowledge on machine scheduling problems in production.•Derives promising ideas for future research on machine scheduling problems in production from the results of the review.

This paper presents the results of a comprehensive and systematic review of 129 literature reviews on machine scheduling problems in production (MSPP). The paper first proposes a conceptual framework that considers the main attributes of MSPP in seven categories and 75 sub-categories. After a descriptive analysis of the sampled papers that give insights into publication patterns for MSPP, a quantitative analysis of the sampled review papers is carried out based on the proposed framework. A synthesis of research findings describes the state-of-knowledge and unveils general deficiencies of literature reviews on MSPP. In addition, the paper provides a comprehensive overview of MSPP, which supports researchers in positioning their own work in the literature and in finding potential innovative research areas. The paper concludes with an outlook on future research opportunities in the area of MSPP.