2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Effects of the COVID Pandemic on Industrial Warehouse Personnel Training and Education

Presented at Engineering Technology Division (ETD) Technical Session 10

Industry 4.0 has affected major changes in warehouse distribution industries through innovations regarding automation, big data analysis, and integrated workforces, to name a few. This paper studies the impact that the global pandemic COVID-19 had on the already changing world of warehouses. In 21 open-ended interviews with warehouse managers/supervisors and executives, questions were posed to gauge how the workforce and executive level personnel perceive changes brought about by Industry 4.0, and how their respective departments and companies are equipped to handle those changes. Some of the findings from this data showed that the effects of COVID were discussed differently amongst the managerial level workforce and their upper-level executive counterparts.
For the managers and supervisors, COVID measures and policies were discussed in response to questions investigating major changes in everyday work demands - responses to such questions were patently different for managers and supervisors actually in the warehouse than for the executives of industrial companies. Responses in this portion of the interview complemented each other in that they mainly concerned disruptions in personnel distribution, interactions with customers, and major impacts on supply chains, especially concerning international products. Amongst the executive level responses, COVID measures were discussed in reference not to barriers or negative changes but in an almost unanimously optimistic tone. Rather than a concentration of COVID responses to similar topics, executive level respondents’ mentions of COVID range across five different questions praising the accelerations that the pandemic brought about in such areas as digital learning and remote work. The more intimate impact of COVID on warehouse managers compared to the macro strokes of impact of COVID on executives could affect priorities for training and education of the technology in the near future.

Authors

K. D. Pomeroy Texas State University [biography]

K. D. Pomeroy is a graduate research assistant for the department of Organization, Workforce, and Leadership Studies at Texas State University.
Dr. Shaoping Qiu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2857-4415 The Institute of Technology-Infused Learning (TITIL), Texas A&M University [biography]

Shaoping Qiu, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist in the Institute of Technology-Infused Learning (TITIL), the School of Education at Texas A&M University. His research interests include organizational leadership, organizational change, stress and well-being, and Human /resource development.
Lei Xie Texas State University [biography]

Lei Xie is a doctoral student at Texas A&M University. He is currently majoring in Human Resource Development in the Department of Educational Administration & Human Resource Development. His research interests include conflict management, organizational learning/change, knowledge management, learning organization, and International HRD. As a second year international graduate student from the People’s Republic of China, he has been actively engaged in academic research. He is working on several book chapters and an independent research project on the subject of organization development/change and organizational learning. He earned a Master’s degree in HRD from Texas A&M University in 2013. He graduated from Henan University of Technology in China with a Bachelor’s degree.
Dr. Malini Natarajarathinam http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1684-6476 Texas A&M University [biography]

Dr. Malini Natarajarathinam joined the faculty of the Industrial Distribution Program at Texas A&M University in 2007. Natarajarathinam received her Ph.D. in Supply Chain Management from The University of Alabama. She received her Bachelor of Engineering (Major: Industrial and Systems Engineering) from Anna University [Tamilnadu, India], her MS in Industrial Engineering from Auburn University, her MA in Management Science, and MS in Applied Statistics from The University of Alabama. She has experience working with many industries such as automotive, chemical distribution, etc. on transportation and operations management projects. She works extensively with food banks and food pantries on supply chain management and logistics-focused initiatives. Her graduate and undergraduate students are an integral part of her service-learning logistics classes.

She teaches courses in strategic relationships among industrial distributors and distribution logistics. Her recent research focuses on engineering education and learning sciences with a focus on how to engage students better to prepare their minds for the future. Her other research interests include empirical studies to assess the impact of good supply chain practices such as coordinated decision making in stochastic supply chains, handling supply chains during times of crisis, and optimizing global supply chains on the financial health of a company. She has published her research in the Journal of Business Logistics, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, and peer-reviewed proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education. She is an active member of the Engineering Education Faculty group at Texas A&M University and is a member of the Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation (IEEI).
Dr. Michael Johnson http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5328-8763 Texas A&M University [biography]

Dr. Michael D. Johnson is a professor in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University. He currently serves as Associate Dean for Inclusion and Faculty Success in the College of Engineering. He is a member of the Engineering Education Faculty at Texas A&M. Prior to joining the faculty at Texas A&M, he was a senior product development engineer at the 3M Corporate Research Laboratory in St. Paul, Minnesota. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University and his S.M. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Johnson’s research focuses on engineering education; design tools; specifically, the cost modeling and analysis of product development and manufacturing systems; and computer-aided design methodology.

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