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The COVID-19 pandemic had a disastrous impact on a substantial number of Filipino seafarers. The government agencies played a crucial role in helping the seafarers. This paper aims to explore the challenges that the Filipino seafarers faced amid the pandemic and initially evaluate the Philippine government’s countermeasures.

This paper reviewed academic literature and secondary data to identify and analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on seafarers. To identify the full range of policies and measures that have been adopted by the Philippines’ government amid the pandemic to mitigate the impact on seafarers, an extensive survey of various sources was conducted. Furthermore, an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) survey was conducted from seafarers' perspective to analyze the priority of these government initiatives.

This study identifies four key challenges for seafarers during the pandemic: crew change crisis, healthcare shortages, certification and the derived problems including financial and mental health issues. Notably, mental health problems are prevalent but receive limited government attention. Despite the government’s efforts to assist seafarers, the AHP survey identifies crew change assistance as the most crucial issue, possibly impacting all others.

This paper recognizes the significant information regarding aid in recovery management and provides much-needed assistance to seafarers during the pandemic and similar crisis situations. It bridges the research gaps and contributes knowledge to the government, stakeholders and various entities such as shipping companies, ship management firms and seafarers' manning agencies.

This paper aims to examine lean thinking in medical commodities supply chains by considering its applications and success factors. It determines the drivers and wastes of medical commodity supply chain, and the existing lean tools and practices together with their application in the supply chain processes. The paper also examined the challenges and success factors for effective lean application in the medical commodities supply chains.

The study used qualitative approaches, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with key informants to form the basis for data collection. Through thematic analysis, the collected data were analyzed by developing themes reflecting the objectives of the study.

The main drivers for waste associated with the supply chain were demand management, supplier development, institutional framework and governance. The wastes were observed at the level of inventory, operation costs, transaction costs, delays in terms of service, commodity delivery time and quality. Digitalization, information technology and standardization were the tools for medical supply chain. Poor infrastructure, unreliable internet supply, environmental uncertainty and poor management support were challenges to realizing an effective supply chain.

Although the qualitative approach used in the study provides detailed information, a quantitative study covers a larger sample for generalization.

Capacity building and professionalism should be given a priority because the philosophy of lean focuses on waste removal and continuous improvement, which highly depends on the quality of human resource (Brito et al., 2020). Limited human resource capabilities in supply chain management will, therefore, result into poor operational efficiency, which are wasted. Moreover, systems interoperability is key waste minimization and, therefore, demands interventions.

The government under the Ministry of Health and other key sector ministries such as local and regional governments should better understand the role of the waste drivers and adopt system-wide reforms to support improvements to remove waste in the medical supply chain. For example, the current institutional framework creates an administrative block and hence leads to wastes. This bureaucratic procedure should be removed to minimize wastes along the chain.

This study is among the first studies to determine applicability and implementation of lean in a resource-constrained context. The paper identifies contextual factors for lean implementation. This paper focused on a holistic view of the entire supply chains to enhance a well-functioning supply chain in delivering health commodities.

Introducing additive manufacturing (AM) in a multinational corporation with a global spare parts operation requires tools for a dynamic supplier selection, considering both cost and delivery performance. In the switchover to AM from conventional manufacturing, the objective of this study is to find situations and ways to improve the spare parts service to end customers.

In this explorative study, the authors develop a procedure – in collaboration with the spare parts operations managers of a case company – for dynamic operational decision-making for the selection of spare parts supply from multiple suppliers. The authors' design proposition is based on a field experiment for the procurement and delivery of 36 problematic spare parts.

The practice intervention verified the intended outcomes of increased cost and delivery performance, yielding improved customer service through a switchover to AM according to situational context. The successful operational integration of dynamic additive and static conventional supply was triggered by the generative mechanisms of highly interactive model-based supplier relationships and insignificant transaction costs.

The dynamic decision-making proposal extends the product-specific make-to-order practice to the general-purpose build-to-model that selects the mode of supply and supplier for individual spare parts at an operational level through model-based interactions with AM suppliers. The successful outcome of the experiment prompted the case company to begin the introduction of AM into the company's spare parts supply chain.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused global supply disruptions and shortages that resulted in countries battling over desperately needed (medical) supplies. In this mayhem, additive manufacturing (AM) provided relief to the strained healthcare systems and manufacturing environments by offering an alternative way to rapidly produce desired products. This study sheds light on how AM was used globally in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study undertakes a systematic and content-centric review of 289 additively manufactured products made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, quantitative frequency-based text mining and various descriptive analyses were applied that support the investigation of the subject under regard.

Results show that AM was primarily used in the medical domain for the production of standard medical items, such as personal protective equipment (PPE) but also for non-obvious and new applications (e.g. swab simulator, rapid diagnostic kits, etc.). Also, certain paradigm shifts were observed, as the effective move to mass production and the mitigation of problems related to certification and standardization emerged as prominent management prospects. Nevertheless, various obstacles arose and remained in the path of lasting AM success, especially with respect to print quality, raw material supply and technological versatility.

Due to the actuality of the topic under investigation, no comparable study has so far been conducted. The systematic review provides a conclusive and precise foundation for further analysis and subsequent discussions. Additionally, no comparable study mapping such a wide array of different AM products exists today.

The future construction site will be pervasive, context aware and embedded with intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to explore and define the concept of the digital skin of the future smart construction site.

The paper provides a systematic and hierarchical classification of 114 articles from both industry and academia on the digital skin concept and evaluates them. The hierarchical classification is based on application areas relevant to construction, such as augmented reality, building information model-based visualisation, labour tracking, supply chain tracking, safety management, mobile equipment tracking and schedule and progress monitoring. Evaluations of the research papers were conducted based on three pillars: validation of technological feasibility, onsite application and user acceptance testing.

Technologies learned about in the literature review enabled the envisaging of the pervasive construction site of the future. The paper presents scenarios for the future context-aware construction site, including the construction worker, construction procurement management and future real-time safety management systems.

Based on the gaps identified by the review in the body of knowledge and on a broader analysis of technology diffusion, the paper highlights the research challenges to be overcome in the advent of digital skin. The paper recommends that researchers follow a coherent process for smart technology design, development and implementation in order to achieve this vision for the construction industry.

This study aims to deepen the understanding of the challenges and implications entailed by deploying mobile clinics in conflict zones to reach populations affected by violence and cut off from health-care services.

This research combines an integrated literature review and an instrumental case study. The literature review comprises two targeted reviews to provide insights: one on conflict zones and one on mobile clinics. The case study describes the process and challenges faced throughout a mobile clinic deployment during and after the Iraq War. The data was gathered using mixed methods over a two-year period (2017–2018).

Armed conflicts directly impact the populations’ health and access to health care. Mobile clinic deployments are often used and recommended to provide health-care access to vulnerable populations cut off from health-care services. However, there is a dearth of peer-reviewed literature documenting decision support tools for mobile clinic deployments.

This study highlights the gaps in the literature and provides direction for future research to support the development of valuable insights and decision support tools for practitioners.