Socio-technical perspectives in the Fourth Industrial Revolution - Analysing the three main visions: Industry 4.0, the socially sustainable factory of Operator 4.0 and Industry 5.0

Abstract

In this position paper, we discuss the socio-technical perspective of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The fourth industrial revolution refers to the novel wave of advanced technologies – like Robotics, the Internet of Things, Big Data – that are adopted in manufacturing organisations. Scholars and practitioners have forecasted the fourth industrial revolution, and it is still underway. This situation allowed the proliferation of various visions in the fourth industrial revolution literature: Industry 4.0, the socially sustainable factory of Operator 4.0 and Industry 5.0. Through a literature review, we analyse the manifesto and pivotal papers of such visions in order to assess how they employ the socio-technical perspective. The results show that Industry 4.0 vision mainly considers the technical system. The vision of the socially sustainable factory of Operator 4.0 is an attempt to consider the social system in conjunction with the technical system. Then, Industry 5.0 vision is socio-technical in nature and also takes into consideration sustainability outcomes. Keywords