The COVID-19 pandemic has affected manufacturing companies and necessitated adaptations of firms’ operations. Despite the increasing interest in this subject, a scarcity of systematic analysis can be observed. The present study systematically reviews the existing research on the COVID-19 pandemic concerning the manufacturing industry. This paper aims to highlight the main impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the manufacturing sector from the operations management perspective, the practical adaptation actions, and future research opportunities. Open research questions and directions for further investigation are articulated and triangulated across organisational, process and technology perspectives. 

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Analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts on manufacturing: a systematic literature review and future research agenda

/pdf/analysis-of-the-covid-19-pandemics-impacts-on-manufacturing-1tpe3f2b.pdf

Navigating the new normal: Which firms have adapted better to the covid-19 disruption?


 The COVID-19 pandemic has caused huge and disruptive technological changes in the healthcare sector, transforming the way businesses and societies function. To respond to the global health crisis, there have been numerous innovation projects in the healthcare sector, including the fast design and manufacturing of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical devices, and testing, treatment, and vaccine technologies. Many of these innovative activities happen beyond organizational boundaries with collaboration and open innovation. In this paper, we review the current literature on open innovation strategy during the pandemic and adopt the co-evolution view of business ecosystems to address the context of change. Based on a detailed exploration of the COVID-19-related technologies in the UK and global healthcare sectors, we identify the key emerging themes of open innovation in crisis. Further discussions are conducted in relation to each theme. Our results and analysis can help provide policy recommendations for the healthcare sector, businesses, and society to recover from the crisis.


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Open Innovation in Times of Crisis: An Overview of the Healthcare Sector in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic has caused major upheavals for manufacturing, and has severe implications for production networks, and the demand and supply chains underpinning manufacturing operations. This paper is the first of its kind to pull together research on both—the pandemic-related challenges and the management interventions in a manufacturing context. This systematic literature review reveals the frailty of supply chains and production networks in withstanding the pressures of lockdowns and other safety protocols, including product and workforce shortages. These, altogether, have led to closed facilities, reduced capacities, increased costs, and severe economic uncertainty for manufacturing businesses. In managing these challenges and stabilising their operations, manufacturers are urgently intervening by—investing in digital technologies, undertaking resource redistribution and repurposing, regionalizing and localizing, servitizing, and targeting policies that can help them survive in this altered economy. Based on holistic analysis of these challenges and interventions, this review proposes an extensive research agenda for future studies to pursue.

/pdf/how-is-covid-19-altering-the-manufacturing-landscape-a-3se03sznoo.pdf

How is COVID-19 altering the manufacturing landscape? A literature review of imminent challenges and management interventions

As the COVID‐19 pandemic spread across the globe in the first quarter of 2020, demand for specialised equipment in hospitals soared. As a result, firms from a variety of sectors repurposed their design and manufacturing to create new products in days. By examining 80 cases of this accelerated innovation, the research investigates how a shared purpose drives change in the innovation process. It applies the lens of exaptation – the discovery of unintended functions for technologies – to explain how product complexity and ecosystem structure affect accelerated innovation in this context. The research extends the application of exaption to manufacturing as well as product design; it identifies a relationship between complexity, exaptation and ecosystems. The research suggests that the ability to exapt design and manufacturing can determine a firm’s ecosystem role. These results lead to implications for theory and for practice, during the response to and recovery from the crisis.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/radm.12460

Wei Liu

Papers

Accelerated innovation through repurposing: exaptation of design and manufacturing in response to COVID-19