Anticipating what the future of work holds for us involves imagining possible scenarios for different segments of the economy. One of them is Industry, the economic activity of transforming raw materials into marketable goods and services.
Industry 5.0 is the latest phase of global industrial development, “focused on combining the creativity and craftsmanship of humans with the speed, productivity and consistency of robots.”
From this perspective, Industry 5.0 complements the technocentrism of Industry 4.0 and fosters debate on how the Industry can contribute to society. The industrial process must be human-centered, valuing all stakeholders, not just shareholders. This means promoting talent, diversity and empowerment among all members of an organization.
Allied to “human centrism” is personalization, promoted by new technologies that facilitate the interrelationship between human beings and computers. This synergy manifests itself in the co-work between the parties: human beings are responsible for activities that require creativity, while robots take care of what is repetitive.
The discussion on Industry 5.0 results from four industrial revolutions, marked by increasingly accelerated technological advances.
Check out the main features of each one below. This is a summary; not all countries have gone through a similar industrialization process.
Starting in the 1760s, Industry 1.0 is characterized by energy generation through water and steam. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, is accentuated in this period.
The textile and steel industry and rail transport stood out in this phase. The English model is the primary representative of the First Industrial Revolution.
Electricity and the invention of the internal combustion engine mark the transition between Industry 1.0 and 2.0 in the 1840s. These technologies allowed for the implementation of assembly lines in factories, which encouraged mass production.
The Fordist model of industries in the United States is the prime example of this phase.
In the 1960s and 1970s, process automation in Industry gained strength thanks to information technologies.
Toyota is the central production system of this phase of the Industrial Revolution. The Lean Thinking ideals that guided the processes of the Japanese manufacturer are still a reference in the Industry today.
The fourth phase of the Industrial Revolution is characterized by the interface between the physical and virtual worlds through technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing and the Internet of Things (IoT).
It also encompasses renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. All this to increase productivity even more, but more sustainably.
While Industry 4.0 focuses on digitizing processes to increase production efficiency, Industry 5.0 focuses on incorporating social and human values into the industrial process without having profit as its primary objective.
That’s why we said that Industry 5.0 came to complement 4.0. Growing automation has made governments and organizations concerned about the dehumanization of the Industry, which could generate a contingent of non-employable professionals.
Co-working between humans and machines is only possible thanks to a set of new technologies:
Futurology has different models and methods, which have gained powerful tools recently with advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Here you find 3 of them.
Although futurologists do not perform experiments in controlled and repeatable environments, as the classical scientific method preaches, they rely on rigorous scientific techniques borrowed from other disciplines.
The best-known future studies methods of predicting the future are:
Developed in 1953 at the RAND Corporation, the method helps to structure communication processes, which enables a group of individuals to deal with complex problems.
The basis of the Delphi method are questionnaires applied individually to experts, which answer questions about the probability, importance and implication of factors, trends and events related to a specific problem. Experts then have access to peer responses to refine their arguments.
The method of predicting the future was developed by Sohail Inayatullah and aimed to create different scenarios based on analyzing past and present events.
The CLA is based on how a problem is formulated and changes the political solutions and the leadership involved.
Also Read: Smart Manufacturing: Industry 4.0 As A Balancing Act For Mechanical Engineering
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