Industry 5.0: Embracing the future of European industry

Europe's industrial landscape is undergoing a massive transformation. The PROSPECTS 5.0 project, a brand-new initiative funded by Horizon Europe, is set to shape the future of this transition by examining how 14 pilot companies are adopting key principles for a successful Industry 5.0. The end result will be a process that helps your organisation prepare for a transition towards the Industry 5.0. This process will provide clear methodology and tools to enable your company to adopt the Industry 5.0 approach.

What is Industry 5.0?

Imagine an industry that's not just automated and efficient, but also human-centred, sustainable, and resilient. That's the vision behind Industry 5.0.  This new wave of industrial development goes beyond the automation and digitalisation focus of Industry 4.0, placing people and the environment at the heart of technological progress.

In practice, this means that companies need to place more emphasis on human-machine collaboration and think about a circular process that benefits the people and environment. The resilience and flexibility of workers allow a company to make more customised and personalised products, with the help of collaborative robots and machines to off-load repetitive and heavy tasks. Gathering data and using that data to improve efficiency of processes will continue to gain importance, so human intelligence can be augmented with artificial intelligence.

The fifth industrial revolution will focus more on the place of companies in the world around them, and how they can benefit workers, customers and the environment.

Exploring how companies embrace Industry 5.0

Throughout the PROSPECTS 5.0 research project, we will delve into how companies around Europe, from startups to established giants, are embracing these Industry 5.0 principles.  By studying real-world examples across 14 different use cases, the project will explore how Industry 5.0 is taking root in sectors like manufacturing, IT services, education, and energy.

The project team will focus on these key areas and how they are adopted by the studied companies:

• Human-centricity: Empowering workers and ensuring technology serves humanity.
• Sustainability: Developing solutions that minimize environmental impact.
• Resiliency: Building strong, adaptable industrial ecosystems.

Addressing these key areas is a strong indicator of a company's readiness for the future, as these factors will undoubtedly play an increasingly important role in the way companies will do business in the future.

Objectives

The project has stated these objectives:

• Creating an open and resilient ecosystem to perform additive knowledge build-up
• Developing an Industry 5.0 Assessment Framework based on a multi-sectorial and multi-stakeholders' engagement and co-creation processes
• Conducting an evidence-based analysis on implementation practices, drivers, success factors, bottlenecks and obstacles regarding the adoption of Industry 5.0 principles
• Providing measurement and adaptation tools for industry leaders and policy-makers at national and European level to increase the uptake of the Industry 5.0 principles
• Accelerating the adoption of results by transferring them to relevant actors

Following the ramp-up phase in the first half of 2024, the project will develop and deploy an assessment famework in the second half of 2024 and analyse the data gathered from use-cases in the course of 2025.

The end result of this research project will consist of an online platform for organisations that want to assess their progress in Industry 5.0 but also share transferable guidelines and policy recommendations. This will help your and various other types of organisations in their green and digital journey towards Industry 5.0 by providing a better technical assistance and business support.