Beyond Industry 4.0: Enabling Technologies and the Socio-Technical Foundations of Industry 5.0
Chapter from the book: Akben, İ. (ed.) 2026. Digitalization and Sustainability in International Trade.

Orhan Şahin
Muş Alparslan University
Özgür Çark
Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University

Synopsis

Industry 5.0 represents a socio-technical and value-oriented reframing of industrial transformation in which digital technologies are assessed not only through efficiency and productivity gains, but also through their contribution to human-centricity, sustainability, and resilience. Rather than replacing the technological foundations of Industry 4.0, this emerging paradigm reinterprets their role within a broader framework of responsible, adaptive, and human-centred industrial development. This chapter examines the enabling technologies and design principles associated with Industry 5.0, arguing that technologies such as digital twins, artificial intelligence, cyber-physical systems, and interoperable digital infrastructures derive their strategic significance not simply from their technical sophistication, but from how they are designed, governed, and embedded in organisational routines. The discussion further shows that the successful implementation of Industry 5.0 depends on more than technological adoption alone; it requires appropriate work design, governance arrangements, accountability structures, and assessment mechanisms capable of translating the three pillars into operational reality. Particular attention is given to issues such as human-in-the-loop oversight, worker-related data governance, interoperability, maturity assessment, and multi-objective performance measurement. By situating Industry 5.0 within the broader evolution of industrial paradigms and analysing its principal implementation challenges, the chapter provides an analytically grounded account of Industry 5.0 as a framework for responsible, resilient, and humanly meaningful industrial transformation.

How to cite this book

Şahin, O. & Çark, Ö. (2026). Beyond Industry 4.0: Enabling Technologies and the Socio-Technical Foundations of Industry 5.0. In: Akben, İ. (ed.), Digitalization and Sustainability in International Trade. Özgür Publications. DOI: https://doi.org/10.58830/ozgur.pub1231.c4973

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Published

March 18, 2026

DOI