Six Horizon Europe projects: BRIDGES 5.0, Prospects 5.0, SkillAIbility, SEISMEC, AIREDGIO and UpSkill, met at the Industry 5.0 in Theory and Practice roundtable webinar on 29 January 2026 to exchange insights from their respective initiatives. The discussion revealed a strong convergence around shared organisational challenges and workforce tensions linked to digital and industrial transformation.
The dialogue confirmed that Industry 5.0 is not an extension of Industry 4.0, but a response to its broader social and organisational consequences. The focus shifts from technological optimisation to the deliberate design and governance of technologies that strengthen human capability, resilience and sustainability. Participants emphasised that human-centricity must be operationalised through co-design, participatory approaches and practical implementation tools. Organisations require structured methods and scalable solutions that translate policy ambition into workplace reality.
In the following interview, Diane Confurius (Senior Data Scientist and Lead researcher in TNO), who contributed to the webinar, reflects on how these principles can be embedded in practice.
The webinar highlighted Industry 5.0 as a response rather than an extension of Industry 4.0. In your view, what fundamentally distinguishes Industry 5.0 in practice within your organisation or sector?
DIANE: In practice, the fundamental distinction is that Industry 5.0 shifts the focus from technology deployment to the deliberate design and governance of technology in relation to human work.
Industry 4.0 primarily asked, “What can technology optimise?
Industry 5.0 asks, “What kind of work do we want to create, and how should technology support human capabilities, learning, and autonomy?”
In the research and technology sector, and particularly in our work at TNO, we see that the vision of Industry 5.0 is widely understood. However, organisations often lack practical methods to translate this vision into concrete design and implementation decisions. The challenge is not technological capability but ensuring that technologies genuinely support workers and organisational resilience in real work environments.
At TNO, we are doing research in human-centred technologies, meaning that we study not only the technical performance of systems but also how they interact with human skills, decision-making, trust, and organisational structures. This includes research and pilot work on explainable AI, human-AI collaboration, skills-based interfaces, and participatory workplace innovation.
Within the SEISMEC project, we addressed this operational gap by developing 41 solution directions supported by design guidelines. These guidelines were not created in isolation but through extensive co-creation sessions involving multiple stakeholders, including engineers, organisational experts, socio-technical scientists, and human factors experts.
For example, in the pilot of ATES Wind Power, the co-creation workshop allowed workers, engineers, and researchers to jointly analyse the new VR training tool. This made it possible to redesign the VR training so that technology supported skill development, trust in the tool rather than imposing rigid control.
This illustrates what fundamentally distinguishes Industry 5.0 in practice: it is not defined by a specific technology but by a different design logic. Human needs, skills, rights, and organisational realities are deliberately integrated into technology design, implementation, and evaluation.
Human-centricity was widely endorsed, yet concerns were raised about it becoming a slogan. What concrete measures can ensure that human-centricity is embedded in organisational design rather than treated as a checkbox exercise?
DIANE: Human-centricity becomes meaningful only when it is embedded structurally into how technologies are designed, implemented, and evaluated, not treated as a communication principle or compliance exercise.
From our experience in the SEISMEC project, one of the most effective measures is to involve workers and other stakeholders directly in the design process through co-creation. This includes structured co-creation workshops, participatory design sessions, and living labs where workers, engineers, managers, and researchers jointly analyse how technologies affect daily work. These processes ensure that technologies align with real work practices, support skills development, and build trust, which significantly improves adoption and reduces implementation risks.
Second, organisations need practical tools that help translate human-centricity into concrete design and implementation decisions. This is precisely the purpose of the SEISMEC solution directions and their design guidelines. These provide structured methods to select appropriate approaches, manage risks, and continuously improve the interaction between technology and human work.
Third, and importantly, organisations need to understand the economic value of investing in human-centricity. Companies make investment decisions based on expected returns. Our pilots show that when human-centric design is integrated from the beginning, organisations avoid costly resistance, underuse of technology, retraining needs, and redesign after deployment. Instead, they achieve faster adoption, higher productivity, stronger workforce engagement, and more sustainable performance over time. In this sense, investing in human-centricity reduces long-term implementation risks and increases the return on technological investments.
Fourth, human-centricity must be monitored continuously, not assumed. This requires feedback mechanisms, human-centred evaluation criteria, and open dialogue between workers, management, and technology developers.