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The most effective ways to mitigate the diffusion of the COVID-19 pandemic are social distancing and the use of face masks as barrier to avoid droplets and to filtrate exhalations coming from infected subjects. Currently used face masks are products developed to be used by workers, both in health care and other contexts, where their use is limited in time and the disposal scenario is properly managed. Their use in a pandemic situation can be thus considered a remedial action due to the emergency. New masks or mask families are needed based on the desirable requirements retrieved by the analysis of the current worldwide situation and covering the gap observed in the market. The present paper aims to describe the complete product development process of a new facial mask (or mask family) for a daily use on a pandemic situation. It challenges the time constraint of the COVID-19 pandemic by adopting a four-step approach and concurrent development of the first phases (definition of requirements and functional derivation). The engineering design process allows to derive two different solutions able to fulfil all the requirements (demands and wishes) of final users, by assuring high ergonomic performance, as well as environmental, economic, and social sustainability.

The majority of companies around the world suffered severe supply chain disruptions since the first wave of the pandemic. This paper, in contrast, focuses on how prepared were companies when the second wave struck. We focused our study on the impacts of COVID-19 disruptions on Supply Chain Management during this second wave in Saudi Arabia, though not clearly defined by a rise in number of cases, we will rely on the dates the lockdown took place during. The purpose of our study is to understand how resilient different companies supply chains were and if that resilience impacted their recovery level. We conducted our study on Saudi companies from different industries and multiple sizes. We excluded international companies operating globally, in order to focus the findings and ensure our analysis covers the local scene. We collected the data using survey questionnaires answered by employees involved in the Supply Chain, Procurement, and Project Management or C-suite level personnel. We conducted our data analysis using SPSS to run a correlation analysis between our findings on the Supply Chain Resilience and our sample Recovery Level. We used a Resilience Testing Model which consists of linking correlations derived from analysing data collected. We have found through our descriptive analysis that, even though companies vary in their scores of understanding, importance, availability of alternatives and preparedness, they all exhibited a disruption from COVID-19. The lessons learned from the correlation analysis is that companies are expected to begin searching for a more diversified supplier base in the near term, thus looking to build a versatile, but cost-effective, supply chain. Shifting supply chains nearby, decreasing the suppliers base, increasing the digitalization of supply chains are essential tactics companies have to start committing to.