OSCG researchers presented their work at EurOMA 2026 in Vienna

Members of the Operations and Supply Chain Group, OSCG, from the Industrial Engineering and Management unit at Tampere University attended the EurOMA 2026 conference, held in Vienna, Austria, from June 27 to July 2, 2026.

The theme of the conference was “Operations Management for a Sustainable and Resilient Future.” This theme reflected many of the questions that organizations and societies are currently facing: how to respond to disruption, how to build more sustainable supply chains, how to use digital technologies responsibly, and how to develop operations that can remain resilient in uncertain conditions.

EurOMA 2026 brought together researchers working on a wide range of topics in operations management. The conference program included discussions on circular operations, digital transformation, supply chain resilience, service operations, servitization, disaster relief operations, operations in emerging economies, and the relationship between people and technology. The conference also placed strong emphasis on multidisciplinary thinking, recognizing that today’s operational challenges cannot be understood through one field alone.

From OSCG, the conference was attended by Abul Khair Jyote, Aki Jääskeläinen, Ella Koivisto, Elviira Saarelma, and Mohammad Moshtari. During the conference, the group contributed to the academic program through three accepted papers. Together, these papers reflected several important research interests of OSCG, including artificial intelligence in operations and supply chains, supplier performance management, supply chain risk management, and collaboration between businesses and humanitarian NGOs.

One of the presented papers, “Natural Language Processing enabled Information Management in Supplier Performance Management,” was presented by Ella Koivisto and co-authored with Elviira Saarelma and Aki Jääskeläinen. The paper examined how artificial intelligence, especially Natural Language Processing, can help organizations make better use of information in supplier performance management. In many organizations, valuable information is not always available in structured databases. It may appear in reports, documents, emails, meeting notes, and other forms of text. The study explored how such unstructured data can be transformed into useful understanding. Based on 27 interviews and a focus group discussion, the paper introduced a structured view of how NLP capabilities can support different information management needs in supplier performance management.

Another paper, “Understanding NLP Adoption Factors for Supply Chain Risk Management,” was presented by Abul Khair Jyote and co-authored with Aki Jääskeläinen and Ella Koivisto. This study looked at how Natural Language Processing is adopted in supply chain risk management. Rather than treating adoption as a simple decision, the paper showed it as a process that develops over time. Drawing on interviews with Nordic manufacturing firms, the study found that adoption is shaped by several connected factors, including external pressures, organizational conditions, user perceptions, attitudes, and data-related issues. The findings suggest that even when a technology seems useful and easy to use, adoption may still depend heavily on how people understand, trust, and respond to it in practice.

The third OSCG-related paper, “A Resource Dependence Framework on Business–Humanitarian NGO Collaboration Against Modern Slavery in Deep-Tier Supply Chains,” was presented by Mohammad Moshtari and co-authored with Nurmala Nurmala. This paper addressed the serious and difficult issue of modern slavery in global supply chains, especially in deep-tier supplier networks where companies often have limited visibility and control. Using Resource Dependence Theory, the study examined why businesses and humanitarian NGOs collaborate in addressing these risks. The paper showed that as supply chains become deeper and more complex, firms’ internal resources may become less effective. In these contexts, NGOs can provide important external resources, including local knowledge, legitimacy, access, and experience in vulnerable settings. The study therefore explained how dependence between firms and NGOs can emerge and change across different supply chain tiers.

Beyond the formal paper presentations, EurOMA 2026 was also an important space for discussion, feedback, and community building. For the OSCG participants, the conference offered opportunities to reconnect with familiar colleagues, meet new researchers, and follow current developments in the field.

Reflecting on the conference, Elviira Saarelma noted that it was valuable to see many familiar faces again and to meet new people. She observed that this year’s program included more AI-focused sessions than before, which made the conference especially relevant for OSCG’s current research. For her, the warm and supportive atmosphere of the conference helped create a space where researchers could exchange ideas and gain new perspectives on their work.

Ella Koivisto, who attended EurOMA for the first time, also emphasized the positive atmosphere of the conference. She described the community as supportive, friendly, and helpful. For her, the conference combined interesting research sessions with social events and good discussions with both familiar and new colleagues. She also noted one memorable practical detail from Vienna: the weather was extremely hot, close to 40 degrees.

Overall, EurOMA 2026 was a valuable conference for OSCG. It provided a platform to present ongoing research, receive feedback from the international operations management community, and engage with topics that are central to the group’s work. The conference also showed how strongly sustainability, resilience, artificial intelligence, and supply chain collaboration are shaping current and future research in operations management.