Intelligent, Sustainable and Resilient Personalized Product-Service Systems towards Industry 5.0

Dear Colleagues,

The mass production paradigm, which has characterized manufacturing in recent decades, aims to achieve sustainable and competitive advantages. The increased and highly volatile consumer/customer demand for user-centered customization and the personalization of products and services present new challenges in manufacturing. The innovative mass personalization paradigm, not fully investigated under Industry 4.0, represents a high-tech manufacturing automation strategy, enabling the better integration and smoother cooperation of hardware devices and machinery (Internet of Things—IoT), software systems and humans in the extended manufacturing value chain. Smart factories, core of this new paradigm, are characterized by a high degree of digitalization and data-centricity. Jointly cooperative working teams of humans and robots autonomously guided by lights collaboratively operate in so-called Lights-out Factories. Extreme automation, developing until "everything is connected to everything else" creates vulnerabilities that have not yet been investigated extensively. The next industrial revolution, Industry 5.0, is expected to cope with these new challenges by bringing the efficiency of manufacturing systems and supply chains beyond limits. Industry 5.0 aims to democratize the co-production of knowledge by employing cutting-edge digital technologies, e.g., Big Data and IoT, supported by three main pillars: (a) human-centricity; (b) resilience; and (c) sustainability. One of the main focuses relies on the development of product platforms aiming to improve the production efficiency and create high added value for the customer/end-user.

This Special Issue explores cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), computer vision, edge computing, advanced sensors, collaborative, mobile and wearable robotics, real-time control and optimization and cognitive systems as promising technologies for the realization of mass personalization/customization under resilient, human-centric manufacturing.

Prof. Dr. Dimitris Mourtzis
Prof. Dr. Carmen Constantinescu
Prof. Dr. Nikolaos Papakostas
Guest Editors

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