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The purpose of the study is to identify the soft skills and abilities that are crucial to success in the fields of operations management (OM) and supply chain management (SCM), using the O*NET database and the classification of a set of professional figures integrating values for task skills and abilities needed to operate successfully in these professions.

The study used the O*NET database to identify the soft skills and abilities required for success in OM and SCM industries. Correlation analysis was conducted to determine the tasks required for the job roles and their characteristics in terms of abilities and soft skills. ANOVA analysis was used to validate the findings. The study aims to help companies define specific assessments and tests for OM and SCM roles to measure individual attitudes and correlate them with the job position.

As a result of the work, a set of soft skills and abilities was defined that allow, through correlation analysis, to explain a large number of activities required to work in the operations and SCM (OSCM) environment.

The work is inherently affected by the database used for the professional figures mapped and the scores that are attributed within O*NET to the analyzed elements.

The information resulting from this study can help companies develop specific assessments and tests for the roles of OM and SCM to measure individual attitudes and correlate them with the requirements of the job position. The study aims to address the need to identify soft skills in the human sphere and determine which of them have the most significant impact on the OM and SCM professions.

The originality of this study lies in its approach to identify the set of soft skills and abilities that determine success in the OM and SCM industries. The study used the O*NET database to correlate the tasks required for specific job roles with their corresponding soft skills and abilities. Furthermore, the study used ANOVA analysis to validate the findings in other sectors mapped by the same database. The identified soft skills and abilities can help companies develop specific assessments and tests for OM and SCM roles to measure individual attitudes and correlate them with the requirements of the job position. In addressing the necessity for enhanced clarity in the domain of human factor, this study contributes to identifying key success factors. Subsequent research can further investigate their practical application within companies to formulate targeted growth strategies and make appropriate resource selections for vacant positions.

Exoskeletons are mechanical structures that humans can wear to increase their strength and endurance. The purpose of this paper is to explain how exoskeletons can be used to improve performance across five phases of manufacturing.

Multivocal literature review, encompassing scientific literature and the grey literature of online reports, etc., to inform comprehensive, comparative and critical analyses of the potential of exoskeletons to improve manufacturing performance.

There are at least eight different types of exoskeletons that can be used to improve human strength and endurance in manual work during different phases of production. However, exoskeletons can have the unintended negative consequence of reducing human flexibility leading to new sources of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) and accidents.

Findings are relevant to function allocation research concerned with manual production work. In particular, exoskeletons could exacerbate the traditional trade-off between human flexibility and robot consistency by making human workers less flexible.

The introduction of exoskeletons requires careful health and safety planning if exoskeletons are to improve human strength and endurance without introducing new sources of MSD and accidents.

The originality of this paper is that it provides detailed information about a new manufacturing technology: exoskeletons. The value of this paper is that it provides information that is comprehensive, comparative and critical about exoskeletons as a potential alternative to robotics across five phases of manufacturing.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for an improved conceptualisation of health service research, using Stengers' (2018) metaphor of “slow science” as a critical yardstick.

The paper is structured in three parts. It first reviews the field of health services research and the approaches that dominate it. It then considers the healthcare research approaches whose principles and methodologies are more aligned with “slow science” before presenting a description of a “slow science” project in which the authors are currently engaged.

Current approaches to health service research struggle to offer adequate resources for resolving frontline complexity, principally because they set more store by knowledge generalisation, disciplinary continuity and integrity and the consolidation of expertise, than by engaging with frontline complexity on its terms, negotiating issues with frontline staff and patients on their terms and framing findings and solutions in ways that key in to the in situ dynamics and complexities that define health service delivery.

There is a need to engage in a paradigm shift that engages health services as co-researchers, prioritising practical change and local involvement over knowledge production. Economics is a research field where the products are of natural appeal to powerful health service managers. A “slow science” approach adopted by the embedded Economist Program with its emphasis on pre-implementation, knowledge mobilisation and parallel site capacity development sets out how research can be flexibly produced to improve health services.

Engineering is a powerful instrument for promoting the social and economic development of nations. Its enhancement is a strategic element to accelerate Brazil’s progress. This paper aims to present a new perspective on the topic of “Engineering and Development in Brazil, Challenges and Prospects” (Guimarães et al., 2007). Its goal is to discuss the need for restructuring the Brazilian system for research, development and innovation (RD&I) and the training of human resources in engineering in the country.

This article is designed to discuss the relations between the performance of the industrial sector and the maturation of engineering in Brazil by looking at the national scientific production in the area in comparison to the world production and to countries (South Korea and The Netherlands). Finally, in terms of training human resources, the Brazilian study abroad program Science without Borders program is discussed in the article as an important tool for the qualification of engineering students in Brazil.

A few of the main findings in this research are as follows: despite being among the top 20 countries in scientific production in Engineering, Brazil still lacks turning this scientific-technological knowledge into products and patents; Brazilian universities and research institutes must build interorganizational collaborations with the industrial sector to increase innovation in the field of engineering; The distribution of the investment in RD&I in engineering must be strategically distributed among its various fields, taking into account national strategies and the technological interrelations between them. The article concludes that engineering is a powerful instrument for promoting a country’s social development while offering indications about Brazilian strategic orientation in the development of engineering.

Despite already being well known that engineering is a powerful instrument for promoting a country’s social development, this article innovates by associating academic scientific production in engineering to other variables related to economic development, such as gross domestic product, human development index, industrial and manufactured production and the filing of patents. It comes at an important moment when the Brazilian Government is discussing new strategies to increase social and economic development in the country while controlling for the investment in RD&I. Therefore, it is the right moment to discuss national policies in science, technology and innovation, especially in the area of engineering.

At present, humankind is facing rapid and profound changes in society, science, technology, economy and environment. The 21st century has witnessed extraordinary scientific and technological progressions. Improvement of technology has generated new educational technique known as e-learning. Nowadays, popularity of e-learning is growing rapidly and numerous educational organizations, public, academic and digital libraries are embracing it. Lately, engineering education is heading toward the blended education system as it successfully combines both chalk and talk system (face-to-face), computer-assisted learning methodologies and internet access feature to learners.

This work discusses the potential of e-learning as an educational system for engineering topics and the challenges faced by educational organizations and public libraries as their partners in applying this system for engineering topics. In addition, number of national and international successful engineering e-learning trials that have been created, organized and/or hosted by educational organizations and public libraries are presented.

The author presents challenges and obstacles that stakeholders, teachers, professors and librarians should be aware of to develop and support the e-learning system. Hence, a number of recommendations are provided to build a bridge linking e-learning and engineering education.

This paper is a complementary work to a previously published study. In this paper, the author sheds light on the link between the e-learning system and the engineering education provided by the educational organizations and hosted by public libraries.

The objective of this research is to investigate the capabilities of the ChatGPT GPT-4 model, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), in comparison to human experts in the context of construction project risk management.

Employing a mixed-methods approach, the study draws a qualitative and quantitative comparison between 16 human risk management experts from Finnish construction companies and the ChatGPT AI model utilizing anonymous peer reviews. It focuses primarily on the areas of risk identification, analysis, and control.

ChatGPT has demonstrated a superior ability to generate comprehensive risk management plans, with its quantitative scores significantly surpassing the human average. Nonetheless, the AI model's strategies are found to lack practicality and specificity, areas where human expertise excels.

This study marks a significant advancement in construction project risk management research by conducting a pioneering blind-review study that assesses the capabilities of the advanced AI model, GPT-4, against those of human experts. Emphasizing the evolution from earlier GPT models, this research not only underscores the innovative application of ChatGPT-4 but also the critical role of anonymized peer evaluations in enhancing the objectivity of findings. It illuminates the synergistic potential of AI and human expertise, advocating for a collaborative model where AI serves as an augmentative tool, thereby optimizing human performance in identifying and managing risks.