HUB 5.0 Timișoara Initiative for Industry and Society 5.0.

The ErgoWork Society, together with the Politehnica University Timișoara (UPT), the West University Timișoara (UVT), and other potential partners, is initiating the first meeting for the establishment of a regional HUB to support and implement the principles of Industry and Society 5.0 on April 4, 2025, between 11:30 AM and 2:30 PM, at the Faculty of Management in Production and Transport, within UPT, located on Remus Street, No. 14.

According to the European Commission (EC), Industry 5.0 is an evolution of the Industry 4.0 paradigm, which focuses on digitalization and automation, adding new dimensions and emphasizing the essential role of research and innovation in the transition towards a sustainable, human-centered, and resilient European industry.

• Sustainability: Promoting production practices that respect planetary boundaries, ensuring efficient resource use and reducing environmental impact.
• Human-centered approach: Placing the physical and psychological well-being of industrial product users and workers at the core of the production process, ensuring safe and satisfying working and usage conditions.
• Resilience: Developing the industry’s capacity to withstand disruptions and adapt to changes while maintaining functionality and competitiveness.

The European Commission (EC) considers Industry 5.0 and its associated concept as a key means of ensuring European well-being and prosperity. In this regard, the EC, through the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG-RTD), has initiated a participatory process of defining and finalizing the Industry 5.0 concept and policies by establishing the consultative body Community of Practice 5.0 (CoP 5.0), which currently includes ADR Vest, the ErgoWork Society, and UPT.

One of the action directions of CoP 5.0 is to support the creation of a network of HUB 5.0 ecosystems that promote and detail the principles of Industry 5.0 and translate them into local action plans. The initiative to establish the HUB 5.0, with its first formal meeting on Friday, April 4, aligns with this effort.

Topics for discussion at the April 4 meeting include the proposal to draft and approve a Manifesto for Industry and Society 5.0.

The manifesto is based on current societal and economic tensions, identified by the author, including during formal and informal CoP 5.0 meetings, but without being linked to the EC’s official position. These tensions are outlined as follows:

• Balancing planetary boundaries with human well-being and a diverse, equitable economic environment, ensuring fair access to resources.
• Technological development that generates evenly distributed physical and psychological well-being, with automation, digitalization, and robotics serving humans and remaining under human control.
• Resilience of diverse business and social enterprises, as well as jobs that provide collective and individual value, fairly rewarded, to counterbalance the concentration of economic and political power and resource control in a limited number of companies and individuals—political-economic oligarchies.
• The ability of enterprises, especially SMEs, to operate and grow in an environment where strategic technologies and resources are largely controlled by political-economic oligarchies that often circumvent political, social, and environmental regulations. European SMEs, which must comply with strict social and environmental regulations, must compete in a global marketplace with oligarchic entities that frequently bypass these rules.

To address these challenges, the Industry 5.0 Manifesto proposes an EU 5.0 societal framework based on 7 pillars:

1. Maintaining a market economy, circular income flows, and a business ecosystem with diverse economic players.
2. Supporting the development of strong and globally competitive European businesses.
3. Limited protection of the EU’s common market.
4. Maintaining human control and decentralizing AI systems as much as possible.
5. Non-financial sustainability reporting (CSRD) linked to adjusted labor productivity, correlated with taxation, financial incentives, and capital access in the EU.
6. Supporting and protecting individuals through Universal Basic Income while encouraging participation in civil society, promoting proximity-based co-working models aligned with the 15-minute city principles.
7. Developing an ecosystem for research, development, innovation, and education in the field of Industry and Society 5.0, structured as EU-wide hubs connected with other global regions.

A detailed draft of the principles outlined in the manifesto is available for download, with the clarification that the adoption of a manifesto for Industry and Society 5.0 is not an objective endorsed by the EC, nor does this draft represent the EC’s position.

In the context of this initiative, the term “industry” is used to designate any organized economic sector—an interpretation also adopted by the European Commission, which considers that industry includes both manufacturing and the services that support economic activities as part of the global value chain.

Thus, within this paradigm, “industry” includes not only traditional manufacturing sectors but also others such as the IT&C industry, the financial-banking-investment industry, the hospitality industry (hotels, restaurants, tourism), the agricultural industry, the medical industry, as well as creative industries such as design, architecture, entertainment, fashion, advertising, and any other economic or business sector.

Participation in the event is open to interested individuals based on an expression and justification of interest (max. 300 characters), sent to ergoworksociety@gmail.com, followed by a confirmation response from the organizers.

The meeting will also include a presentation of the Virtual EDU project, and the event is part of the Faculty of Management in Production and Transport Days, April 3-4, 2025, organized with the support of GreenForest.

*Image generated with DALL-E