Industry v5
Assembly Line
Industry 5.0: Industrial Revolution With a Soul
In short, the concept of Industry 5.0 is mostly focused on the integration of humans working alongside robots and IoT devices in the automated industrial environments of the future. As opposed to Industry 4.0 that was mostly about leveraging robots and smart machines for maximum efficiency and high performance in manufacturing, Industry 5.0 is centered around the human impact and how latest technologies, such as IoT and Big Data, can be leveraged to empower human work and capabilities.
The concept of biological transformation as addition to digital transformation is another part of Industry 5.0 paradigm. This is why all kinds of smart materials and bio-inspired technologies are also considered to be a crucial property for Industry 5.0 solutions.
Industry 5.0: Adding the Human Edge to Industry 4.0
So, Industry 5.0 does not so much represent yet another Industrial Revolution but rather serves to augment Industry 4.0 technologies by strengthening the collaboration between humans and robots. With Industry 5.0, the nine pillars of Industry 4.0 are expanded upon by a drive to place human creativity and well-being at the center of industry – to merge the speed and efficiency of machine technologies with the ingenuity and talent of human counterparts.
The integration of cobots and humans bring the potential to personalize and customize goods at an industrial level. As cobots execute repetitive tasks with exacting and predictable efficiency, humans can oversee the process to ensure that real-time requests for customization are understood and realized.
Tech trends driving Industry to v5.0
Remote connectivity, advanced engineering with multiple digital twins, mixing physical and digital assets, and the change of human-machine interaction are driving industry along that path toward Industry 5.0.
Perducat questioned whether it’s too soon to look at Industry 5.0 when all the promise of Industry 4.0 has not yet been delivered, but he identified five changes that are attainable and impactful in Frost & Sullivan’s comparison of Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0:
- delivery of customer experience,
- hyper customization,
- responsive and distributed supply chain,
- experience-activated (interactive) products, and
- return of manpower to factories.
Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0—Inception, conception and perception
Industry 4.0, an initiative from Germany, has become a globally adopted term in the past decade. Many countries have introduced similar strategic initiatives, and a considerable research effort has been spent on developing and implementing some of the Industry 4.0 technologies. At the ten-year mark of the introduction of Industry 4.0, the European Commission announced Industry 5.0. Industry 4.0 is considered to be technology-driven, whereas Industry 5.0 is value-driven. The co-existence of two Industrial Revolutions invites questions and hence demands discussions and clarifications. We have elected to use five of these questions to structure our arguments and tried to be unbiased for the selection of the sources of information and for the discussions around the key issues. It is our intention that this article will spark and encourage continued debate and discussion around these topics.