Towards Industry 5.0 Skills - Off-site Construction Settings in Denmark

Abstract

Industry 5.0 has recently gained attention in scientific and industrial circles, as the European Union urges industries to look at the human-centric approach in the era of rapid acceleration of technology adoption under the umbrella of the Industry 4.0 concept. The existing studies on Industry 5.0 in the construction sector focus mainly on health and safety issues, waste management, construction materials production, and measurement of environmental features. However, research on how the manufacturing settings and the required change of skills of manufacturing workers have changed in off-site production is scarce. Hence, this investigation aims to investigate contemporary manufacturing settings in the off-site construction industry and how the transition towards a cyber-physical system might affect the skill set of a manufacturing worker. The data was collected through observations. Data were captured as images of production processes, supported by field notes and unstructured interviews. The analysis of the data collected during two visits to off-site construction industry factories in Denmark shows that off-site production operates primarily using traditional tools from on-site production, namely by hand. Only a limited number of processes have been automated or supported by new technology. Furthermore, it was found that the present focus on the production method on the shopfloor means the shopfloor workforce must have traditional skills and use traditional tools to complete tasks such as setting up concrete casts or cutting timber. We argue furthermore that further research is required, and uncovering the barriers to new technology implementation and new job design in the off-site construction industry is recommended. Once revealed, this knowledge will allow us to propose multiple solutions to shift towards Industry 4.0 and 5.0. This shift will mean that the construction industry can experience and harvest the advantages of new technologies.