The Rise of Industry 5.0: A Revolution Focused on Humans and Technology Synergy

Wondering what it’s all about, I am referring about Industry 5.0. While companies and whole industries are still in the middle of Industry 4.0, the next revolution is already well on its way—Industry 5.0.

The concept of Industry 5.0 is a relatively new one. According to the European Union, Industry 5.0 “provides a vision of industry that aims beyond efficiency and productivity as the sole goals, and reinforces the role and the contribution of industry to society.” and “It places the wellbeing of the worker at the center of the production process and uses new technologies to provide prosperity beyond jobs and growth while respecting the production limits of the planet”.

Industry 4.0 has been dealing with the integration of innovation and new technologies into the manufacturing production process. Though Industry 4.0 has delivered industrial automation and other significant positive impacts, it sometimes has replaced humans in the workflow process. Industry 5.0 seeks to correct that imbalance, using the concepts of cognitive computing, cyber-physical systems, and artificial intelligence to ensure humans have a role in the digital transformation that is continuing to evolve.

Industry 5.0 seeks to restore a human-centric approach to business that some would say was lacking with an Industry 4.0 approach. The symbiosis of humans and machines is essential to creating more jobs, leveraging productivity and efficiency, and attracting and retaining talent.

Perhaps the most important distinction of Industry 5.0 is the reintroduction of the human element into the manufacturing process. In one sense, the human element brings the soul back to manufacturing by enabling collaborative production – the imagination and flexibility of the human worker becomes empowered and advanced with the ability to harness cyber-physical systems like collaborative robots (or cobots). The combination of smart machines, cognitive computing, cloud computing, and savvy humans will allow for true “mass personalisation” and more nimble production.

Bringing Empowered Humans back to the Shop Floor

“Industry 5.0 seeks to restore a human-centric approach to business that some would say was lacking with an Industry 4.0 approach”, let’s just see how 5.0 stands vis~a~vis 4.0 in generic terms (as highlighted by Frost & Sullivan).

At the core of this concept (5.0) are new business scenarios aided by advanced technology themes, focused on delivering individually tailored customer experiences. The individual definition of products, services and solutions will fuse into one and create Industry 5.0—the era of experience.

In Industry 5.0, customer aspirations will drive the market interests toward hyper customisation. Each individual product will be unique to its intended customer and manufactured accordingly. To cater to the trend of “batch size one,” manufacturers will have large, robotised intelligent factories positioned around the globe to manufacture the basic design of the product in bulk. The basic, semi-finished material will then be sent to local factories, where the final stages of the product will be completed using manual labor. This style of distributed supply chain coupled with the gig economy will transform the existing nature of jobs, and industries will experience it firsthand.

Industry 5.0 is a model of the next level of industrialisation characterised by the return of manpower to factories, distributed production, intelligent supply chains and hyper customisation, all aimed to deliver a tailored customer experience time after time.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Industry 5.0 is a new and emerging phase of industrialisation that sees humans working alongside advanced technology and A.I.-powered robots to enhance workplace processes. It also has a more human-centric focus and a greater emphasis on sustainability.

Some of the advantages of Industry 5.0 are

• It creates higher value jobs that afford greater personalisation for customers and improved design freedom for workers
• It improves manufacturing strategies and processes by using big data technologies, IoT, and AI
• It reduces resource consumption and atmospheric emissions by enabling more efficient production
• It facilitates adherence to new government regulations and international manufacturing requirements
  Meanwhile the increased focus on sustainability and resilience means that businesses become more agile and flexible while also having a positive impact on society – rather than simply mitigating any negative effects

Some of the disadvantages of Industry 5.0 are

• It requires complex and expensive software to integrate humans and machines
• It poses security risks due to increased connectivity and data sharing
• It demands highly skilled workers to operate and maintain sophisticated systems
• It may create ethical and social dilemmas regarding the role and responsibility of humans and machines

Implementation: Opportunities and Challenges 

Industry 5.0 is a new paradigm that aims to combine the strengths of humans and machines to create a more efficient and sustainable manufacturing process. Here are some opportunities and challenges of Industry 5.0.

Opportunities

• Increased automation will impact employment positively in many sectors through the deployment of next-generation technology
• Highly automated manufacturing systems provide greater opportunity for customisation to customers
  Industry 5.0 provides greater opportunities for creative people to come and work which enables the optimisation of human efficiency
• It enables the automation of manufacturing methods better with Industry 5.0 by feeding the real-time information from the sector
• Increased safety of the employees at the work floor because COBOTs can take up hazardous and dangerous works
• More personalised products and services increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and attracts new customers which results in increased profit and market share for the companies
• It provides great opportunities to start-ups and entrepreneurs in creative and innovative spheres to come up with new products and services allied to industry 5.0 provided adequate funding and infrastructure is available
• Industry 5.0 provides increased importance to the human-machine interaction subject field and offers a larger platform for research and development in this domain
• Quality services can be provided at the remote locations with the help of industry 5.0 especially in healthcare industry such as medical surgeries in rural areas by robots.

Challenges

• Smart manufacturing systems demand higher autonomy and sociality capabilities as key factors of self organised systems. The shift from present context to industry 5.0 is difficult due to lack of autonomy in the present systems such as integrated decision making
• There is an increased cyber security threat in critical industrial systems and manufacturing lines at industry 5.0 due to its increased connectivity and use of standard communications protocols
• It is challenging for startups and entrepreneurs since industry 5.0 demands high investments and infrastructure with cutting edge technology requirements.
• Challenging to draw regulatory mechanisms in industry 5.0 due to high amount of automation presence. For example, whom to be held accountable in case of failures and to what extent.
• Business strategies in industry 5.0 demands higher level of dynamism to sustain competition due to differential customer preferences