Industry 5.0 Is Coming. Here’s Why You Should Care
We’ve reached a peak as far as connecting and optimizing machines, according to one industry expert. Now we must focus on connecting and optimizing humans — the core of Industry 5.0.
November 23, 2021
As manufacturers embrace Industry 4.0 — the digital future of production — industry experts are stressing that Industry 5.0, focused on human-machine interaction, is not far behind.
This evolution is the subject of a panel discussion, “Creative People, Collaborative Robots & Smart Factories (beyond Industry 4.0?),” scheduled for Dec. 8 at Advanced Manufacturing East in New York. The three-day event features six co-located trade shows, including Plastec East, Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) East, and EastPack, and more than 30 conference sessions at the Jacob Javits Convention Center from Dec. 7 to 9.
Empowering humans
Simply put, the thrust of Industry 5.0 is “using advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) data to help empower humans to do better work,” explained panelist Chris Kuntz, Vice President of Marketing for AI-powered connected-worker platform Augmentir. The workplace has evolved such that “the old way of supporting your workers just doesn’t work today, and manufacturers are starting to realize that.”
Will Healey III |
Added panel moderator Will Healy III, “You can have all the greatest technology in the world, but if you don’t have the people on board and the right processes in place, the technology is irrelevant. So the idea is this: How do we put people at the center of our industrial revolution, at the center of our processes, and at the center of our technology implementations to make the people we have more productive, more efficient, more flexible, and more valuable to our organizations?”
This is where all the elements of Industry 4.0 — robots, cobots, sensors, and AI — must be harnessed through intensive organizational change.