Strictly speaking, the Fifth Industrial Revolution is not an industrial or technological revolution, but rather a human-centred improvement of work processes. However, this can only be achieved thanks to the comprehensive integration of new digital, intelligent technologies. The changes to industrial production and their impact on the world of work with emphasis on new prospects for workers – this is the main focus of the “Fifth Industrial Revolution”.

From the steam engine to the cobot

After the first, technical Industrial Revolutions – characterised by mechanisation, the division of the production process into assembly line work, support from computers, and the integration of digital technologies to boost the efficiency of corporate processes – the Fifth Industrial Revolution is centred around people. Industry 5.0 is aimed at finding answers to the question of how people’s workload can be reduced with the help of intelligent technologies in order to improve work processes so that (skilled) workers can spend more time performing valuable, creative, and value-adding tasks. “Industry 5.0 will transform the factory into a place where creative people can come and work in order to create a personalised, human experience for employees and their customers,” explained Esben Østergaard, co-founder of Universal Robots, who is extremely optimistic about the future cooperation between people and machines. Repetitive, physically demanding tasks are already being taken over by machines by way of digitised work steps.

Supporting people and reducing their workload

If one also takes advantage of the learning aspect of the digital transformation, it leads to a decisive expansion of the cooperation between people and machines: whether collaborative robots (cobots) that support production with constantly growing know-how, largely autonomous processes thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT), or sensors and analysis programs that ultimately turn “big data” back into “small data” in order to simplify processes. The essential goal of all digitalisation measures as part of Industry 5.0 is to support people and reduce their workload.