ScAIEM 2025 - Parallel Sessions

Chair: Samuel Bruning Larsen (DTU)

This session focuses on how Industrial Engineering and Management education is evolving to meet new demands. Themes include integrating sustainability and ESG skills into curricula, reflecting on the long-term development of programs to better align with industry practice, and using innovative methods such as simulation-based learning. Together, these perspectives highlight how education can adapt to prepare students for the challenges of a changing professional landscape.

• From Regulation to Education: Building ESG Management Skills in Industrial Engineering    
  • Samuel Bruning Larsen (DTU)    
• Adapting Education, Empowering Practice: The Evolution of a 20-Year Project Management Program    
  • Haukur Ingi Jónasson (HR)    
• AI Enhanced Innovation and Creativity
  • Jaakko Kujala (UO)    

Chair: Rögnvaldur Sæmundsson (HI)

This session looks at the future of research collaboration in Industrial Engineering and Management, with a focus on opportunities and challenges across different levels. We explore Horizon Europe as a key funding source, examine the role of EU-based networks in building partnerships, and extend the view to collaborations beyond Europe. The session provides insights into how IEM researchers can strengthen connections, secure support, and create impact through international cooperation.

Chair: Kirsi Kokkonen (LUT)
Chair: Thomas Lennerfors (UU)

Ethical issues are central to industrial engineering and management education, for example related to AI and automation, sustainability trade-offs, workplace safety, and responsible leadership.

This session invites educators, program directors, and others to discuss how we address ethics in IEM courses and programs.

In the session, we will hear short insights about:

• A course in Ethics in technology and organizing at Uppsala University (Nina Kivinen)
• Ethics education involving expertise from medicine at the University of Iceland (Svanur Sigurbjörnsson)
• Ethics education at LUT (Kirsi Kokkonen), and a module on the ethical use of AI involving universities from the Sub-Saharan area at DTU (Kathrin Kirchner).

Chair: Guðmundur Valur Oddsson (HI)

This session continues the joint work toward a ScAIEM white paper on Industrial Engineering and Management. Using education as a transformation process—students as inputs, learning as transformation, and graduates as outputs—we reflect on how IEM is defined. Are members framing the field through inputs, transformation (content), outputs, or controlling factors such as resources and organization? The discussion seeks to sharpen and align our collective understanding of IEM.

Chair: Hanne Finestrand (NTNU) & Johan Frishammer (LTU)

This session offers PhD students and early-career researchers the chance to engage directly with experienced editors and senior faculty. It provides insights into the publishing process, from crafting strong submissions to navigating peer review. Participants will gain practical advice, better understand what journals look for, and have the opportunity to ask questions that can help them succeed in sharing their research with the wider academic community.

Chair: Pernilla Ulfvengren (KTH)

This session reflects on how IEM education is delivered and how different formats shape learning and impact. Themes include pedagogy, balancing distance learning with on-campus socialization, part-time versus full-time study, and integration with working life. We also consider how educational setups connect to industry and societal needs. The discussion aims to envision future models of IEM education that are both relevant and adaptable.

• Grand global engineering challenges in a very short and flipped course on systems thinking  
  •  Pernilla Ulfvengren (KTH)    
• Case-based and problem-based learning   
  •  Miia Martinsuo (UTU)    
• Industry Partners’ Motivations and Experiences in IEM Problem- and Project-Based Learning Courses    
  • Lars Uppvall (KTH)    
• Unlocking Hybrid Teaching: Which Skills to Learn and in Which Order
  • Bjarke Nielsen (DTU)  

Chair: Gunnar Stefansson (HI)

This session focuses on improving the international study experience within IEM master programs. We will explore how institutions can better support student adaptation, intercultural teamwork, and inclusive learning environments in joint and exchange programs. Attention will also be given to the role of mentorship, industry partnerships, and co-creation between students and faculty in shaping meaningful global learning pathways.

Chair: Lars Bengtsson (LTH)

Master theses and project work in the engineering students’ education are according to Bramwell and Wolfe (2008) an important but in university-industry collaboration research often underestimated part of the knowledge spillover and interactive learning between universities and industry, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Overall, the forms and effects of university-industry R&D-collaboration has attracted considerable research attention, while university-industry educational collaboration has been relatively neglected. This is peculiar as most firms, especially SMEs, are mostly interested in our students and not in R&D-collaboration.

Session participants:  

• Carl-Johan Asplund (LTH)
• Bo Carlson (KTH)
• Sara Grex (DTU - Online)

We will in this session present different forms of, mainly master theses and student projects in IEM and engineering, university-industry educational collaboration and its effects both in terms of innovation knowledge transfer to firms and learnings at three different engineering schools. The session will discuss various ways to strengthen university-industry educational collaboration, especially for SMEs and startups, in the road ahead, with a special focus on IEM-education. Important questions in the session are: How can we collaborate better with industry in the IEM and engineering education? How can we better support industry with innovation knowledge transfer? Which role does IEM-education play, compared to other engineering educations, in university-industry educational collaboration, and how can we develop it? 
 

Chair: Helgi Þór Ingason (HR)

This session brings together fresh perspectives on how organizations can thrive when stability is no longer guaranteed. The talks examine ways to prepare for the unexpected, create structures that enable responsiveness rather than rigidity, and recognize the often-hidden forces that shape collaboration and growth in modern work. Together, they offer insights into navigating complexity with creativity, foresight, and more adaptive forms of leadership.

• Anticipating the Unthinkable: New Methods for Risk Assessment in an Age of Black Swans  
  • Þórður Víkingur Friðgeirsson (HR)    
• From Bureaucracy to Agility: Lean Governance for a Projectified World    
  • Helgi Þór Ingason (HR)    
• Leading the unseen: Rethinking informal learning leadership in the age of digital knowledge work
  • Oona Vuorio (OU)    

Chair:  Anna Öhrwall Rönnbäck (LTU)

This session explores the role of Industrial Engineering and Management in national defense, focusing on product development speed, innovation under pressure, and strategic decision-making. Drawing on recent lessons from aeronautics and conflict contexts, we discuss how IEM research and education can support rapid capability development, agile cooperation, and informed strategic choices in a world where peace, crisis, and war coexist.
 

Chair: Kristine Wilhelm Lund (SDU)

• EU COST Action "Multiple Wiew Life-Cycle Sustainability Assessment"

  • Hannele Lampela (OU)

• New Value Opportunities for Entrepreneurs through Intermediary Actors

  • Senad Osmanovic (HH)

• Collaborative Program Development in Times of Transformation: Mobilizing Stakeholder Interaction in Industrial Engineering and Management Education

  • Dariusz Osowski (MDU)

• The Language Advantage: Emotional Regulation and Its Impact on Team Performance

  • Toon Larsson (MDU)

• Exploring the business performance of different recommender system strategies on digital media streaming platforms

  • Lovisa Annerwall (MDU)

• Simulation as Strategic Decision Support: Designing the Healthcare System of the Future

  • Ainhoa Goienetxea (HIS)

• AI enhanced creativity in innovation challenge

  • Nina Jackson (OU)

• Recycling Value Chains for End-of-life Wind Turbine Blades: A Multiple Case Study

  • Kristine Wilhelm Lund (SDU)

Chair: Anna Uhlin (MDU)

The process for changing an education program curriculum is a change process bounded by rather strict regulations. In effect, such changes are longterm projects that don’t show ‘results’ until several years after initiation. In this session we ask how we, in order to manage the continuous global, regional, and local challenges and opportunities that demand change to our education programs, can work with smaller and faster impact changes to keep our Industrial engineering and management programs relevant and modern while at the same time consistent in terms of framing and quality? How can we, through small changes, construct the road ahead? This is a session in which we in a roundtable format share experiences and discuss new ideas for how we work with continuous change in our programs.

Chair: Anna Jerbrant (KTH)
Chair: Arild Aspelund (NTNU)

This session explores the career paths of Industrial Engineering and Management graduates across several Nordic countries. By reflecting on where students enter the workforce, we highlight key industry sectors, typical roles, and emerging opportunities. The discussion offers insights into how education aligns with industry needs and sheds light on trends shaping the future of IEM careers, helping participants understand where talent contributes most in practice.

Chair: Thomas Lennerfors (UU)

This session invites discussion and debate on the core of Industrial Engineering and Management as “technology-intensive, pluralistic value creation in the betweenness.” Participants will reflect on the histories, present interpretations, and possible futures of the field, while exploring tensions and synergies between technology, value creation, and societal contexts. Through group and plenary dialogue, the session aims to inspire new perspectives and collaborative research directions.

Chair: Aziza Al Ghafri (MDU)

This interactive workshop takes a critical look at a seemingly small organizational change, the addition of a cross-functional “team ombud” role meant to improve handovers, information flow, and coordination between nursing staff, team leads, and management. While the idea is attractive (clearer interfaces, fewer bottlenecks), implementation is non-trivial: role ambiguity, overlapping mandates, shift patterns, workload redistribution, union rules, and legacy IT/documentation practices can generate resistance, confusion, or unintended consequences. We begin with a concise case framing (design intent and mixed early signals) and then move to hands-on group work: participants map frictions, articulate trade-offs, and sketch safe-to-fail pilots with balanced metrics (professional, economic, and practical), including negative indicators (e.g., rework, incident reports, escalation delays). We close by harvesting tactics for governance, stakeholder alignment, and iterative refinement. The session centers on what makes “small” changes hard, and how IEM tools can help design, test, and adapt them responsibly in welfare services and other complex systems.