Will the Next Industrial Revolution Put Humans First This Time?

We may still be in the middle of Industry 4.0—an era of greater automation, digitalization and efficiency across all sectors—but, according to experts, Industry 5.0 is already on its way. In the fifth industrial revolution, companies will be able to take advantage of the technological advances made in Industry 4.0 to benefit not just the enterprise, but also employees.

Previous industrial revolutions radically transformed industries and markets, but have a spottier record when it comes to employee considerations, such as worker safety. So, how could Industry 5.0 harness advanced technology to make working more human-centric and enhance the worker experience?

The exponential shift from Industry 4.0 to 5.0 is happening much more quickly than the transitions of preceding industrial revolutions, between which there were gaps of up to 100 years. Industry 5.0 is likely to be in full swing within 15 years.

“It’s not so much a revolution, but an evolution of industrial automation and the digital transformation journey that so many enterprises and industries are on already,” says Dr. Thierry E. Klein, President of Bell Labs Solutions Research at Nokia Bell Labs. He believes that upcoming technological advances in network connectivity facilitated by AI, the cloud and 6G will significantly benefit workers in the Industry 5.0 era.

Advanced network communications will be extremely important, Klein says, because the benefits of Industry 5.0 stem from the collection, processing and sharing of data and information. In particular, 6G technology’s unprecedented sensing capabilities will be crucial.

6G sensing enables the build of more advanced, “dynamic” digital twins—digital representations of physical spaces, objects and human bodies—to better understand and improve real-world situations.

“Any time you want to optimize something, you need to sense, which broadly means collecting data about the surrounding environment—capturing information about humans, spaces, machines and so forth,” says Klein. “Once I have that information, I can make intelligent decisions—and that’s where AI comes in, because I use AI to extract knowledge and insight.”

With data flowing on 6G networks, the scale of the information captured and the speed at which it can be processed and shared will allow optimization loops to run in near-real time. These optimizations can be applied to very large systems to improve, for example, an energy grid, a smart city or even a global network.

Sensing also optimizes safety in environments where people and machines work together, says Klein. In industrial workplaces such as factories, mines, ports and warehouses, sensing can inform workers about the movements and routes of robots and autonomous vehicles, as well as find the most efficient and safest routes, reducing the likelihood of accidents. 

“Industry 5.0 will let automation do the tedious work, enabling people to focus on the high-level tasks that involve sophisticated thinking, personal taste and creativity. Not everything is programmable,” says Professor Charlie Wang, Chair in Smart Manufacturing at the University of Manchester—meaning that the fifth industrial revolution isn’t only about increasing efficiency, but also promises to improve worker safety and foster closer collaboration between humans and machines to achieve desired outcomes.

The enhanced human-centricity of Industry 5.0 will also facilitate learning opportunities and other worker benefits, such as deeper employee engagement, more flexible working hours and accommodations for an aging workforce, thereby helping to optimize job satisfaction, talent retention and enterprise stability.

Industry 5.0 will transform workplaces and industrial operations through human-centric technology innovations and 6G’s “sixth sense” capabilities.

Fewer industrial accidents are likely to occur, thanks to the network’s improved ability to assess the risk potential for people and objects well beyond their immediate area, enabled by sensor networks that let workers “see around corners.”

The purpose of Industry 5.0 is to release people from labor-intensive work, Wang says. And as a result of network innovation, employees will feel safer, more secure and in control, while businesses will be more resilient.

Together, new AI, 6G and cloud technologies promise to enable a more connected, responsive and intelligent environment, enhancing well-being and the worker experience as well as enterprise efficiency.

“I fundamentally believe in the positive, transformative power of technology,” says Klein.