Innovating human capital in Industry 5.0: Position paper: Skills challenges in Industry 5.0
report
Organizations adopting industry 5.0 seek to optimize technological advancements with human-centric
values and environmental responsibility promoting a more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient industrial future. Industry 5.0 holds great promise. However, despite many initiatives, Industry 5.0 is still very much a development pushed by technology suppliers and adopted only by a handful of large industrial companies in the Netherlands. This lack of adoption in about 90% of the Dutch industrial companies, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), is mainly due to absence of the required personnel, capabilities, and expertise to effectively embrace Industry 5.0. Here, we detail one of the most prominent challenges associated with Industry 5.0 adoption; production worker skills required to use advanced technologies, and what SMEs can do to overcome this challenge. True Industry 5.0 adoption requires production workers to stay abreast of and actively participate in continuous technological advancements. Industry 5.0 necessitates an operational workforce aware of the progression of new technology, comprehending its practical applications, and demonstrating a willingness to grasp, implement, and adapt to technology. All while these workers leverage their existing sophisticated knowledge, expertise and craftmanship. These prerequisites, however, pose a challenge for production workers in SMEs who are not inherently exposed to novel techniques and are seldom included in the decisions surrounding, and implementation of, new technology. Hence, questions emerge not only which specific skills production workers need but also on what can be done within SMEs to continuously increase and uphold those worker skills. In this publication, these questions are addressed by specifying what skills production workers need to cope with and contribute to technological driven change, and how organizations can stimulate and facilitate the development of those skills. We do so by combining insights from literature and empirical research conducted in this project.
values and environmental responsibility promoting a more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient industrial future. Industry 5.0 holds great promise. However, despite many initiatives, Industry 5.0 is still very much a development pushed by technology suppliers and adopted only by a handful of large industrial companies in the Netherlands. This lack of adoption in about 90% of the Dutch industrial companies, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), is mainly due to absence of the required personnel, capabilities, and expertise to effectively embrace Industry 5.0. Here, we detail one of the most prominent challenges associated with Industry 5.0 adoption; production worker skills required to use advanced technologies, and what SMEs can do to overcome this challenge. True Industry 5.0 adoption requires production workers to stay abreast of and actively participate in continuous technological advancements. Industry 5.0 necessitates an operational workforce aware of the progression of new technology, comprehending its practical applications, and demonstrating a willingness to grasp, implement, and adapt to technology. All while these workers leverage their existing sophisticated knowledge, expertise and craftmanship. These prerequisites, however, pose a challenge for production workers in SMEs who are not inherently exposed to novel techniques and are seldom included in the decisions surrounding, and implementation of, new technology. Hence, questions emerge not only which specific skills production workers need but also on what can be done within SMEs to continuously increase and uphold those worker skills. In this publication, these questions are addressed by specifying what skills production workers need to cope with and contribute to technological driven change, and how organizations can stimulate and facilitate the development of those skills. We do so by combining insights from literature and empirical research conducted in this project.
TNO Identifier
997369
Publisher
Tech Your Future
Collation
20 p.
Place of publication
Enschede