Technology’s Next Big Thing? Putting People Back into the Equation

Leading brands are busy deploying networking plants and equipment for greater process control, efficiency, and profitability to attain the benefits of Industry 4.0, the Fourth Manufacturing Revolution. But some say Industry 5.0 is already here, according to Shalabh Bakshi, Siemens’s director, digital enterprise and head of automotive vertical market, Canada. Industry 5.0 “puts humans back into the equation” to enhance the agility, sustainability, and resiliency of production systems.

Bakshi’s presentation “Industry 5.0: Creative People, Collaborative Robots & Smart Factories” during 2020 Virtual Engineering Week plays like a documentary of a futuristic factory that even a layperson can grasp. Video clips, clear graphics, and research findings span solutions from augmented-reality glasses that free factory leaders to view human-machine interface data from any location to large-scale solutions. These include analytics, artificial intelligence, simulations, robots, cobots, digital twins, and more. Connecting it all is a pervasive digital thread that supports a vision of waste reduction and closed-loop manufacturing in a circular-economy business model.