This volume contains selected papers presented at a UK-Japanese Workshop held at Churchill College, Cambridge, July 1995. The first group of papers looks at modelling, and solution techniques that have proved useful in the operational and strategic levels of manufacturing-greedy algorithms, Markov Decision processes and Petri Nets. Further papers concentrate on operational aspects of manufacturing in an uncertain environment. The last group describes interesting problems. The volume shows that the need for stochastic modelling is an important factor in support of decision making, and that this is a growing, exciting and rewarding area of research.