Although manufacturing companies are currently situated at a transition point in what has been called Industry 4.0, a new revolutionary wave—Industry 5.0—is emerging as an ‘Age of Augmentation’ when the human and machine reconcile and work in perfect symbiosis with one another. Recent years have indeed assisted in drawing attention to the human-centric design of Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) and to the genesis of the ‘Operator 4.0’, two novel concepts that raise significant ethical questions regarding the impact of technology on workers and society at large. This paper argues that a value-oriented and ethical technology engineering in Industry 5.0 is an urgent and sensitive topic as demonstrated by a survey administered to industry leaders from different companies. The Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approach is proposed as a principled framework to illustrate how technologies enabling human–machine symbiosis in the Factory of the Future can be designed to embody elicited human values and to illustrate actionable steps that engineers and designers can take in their design projects. Use cases based on real solutions and prototypes discuss how a design-for-values approach aids in the investigation and mitigation of ethical issues emerging from the implementation of technological solutions and, hence, support the migration to a symbiotic Factory of the Future.

In recent years, interest in economic, environmental and social sustainability has increased significantly. Companies are gradually adopting behaviors aimed at achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, which represent a crucial aspect of the 2030 Agenda. In practice, they are currently incorporating organizational strategies that jointly consider environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG), with the aim of generating value for all stakeholders. This paper aims to review, through a recognized seven-step procedure, the current literature on the impact that ESG practices have in industry, with a focus on the reduction of carbon emissions. The results are extremely useful for both researchers and entrepreneurs. The bibliometric analysis shows that interest in the ESG paradigm has grown considerably in the last three years. Furthermore, through the analysis of 13 key documents, it emerges that (i) the European community is pushing significantly towards the adoption of ESG practices through new regulations, (ii) the link between industrial operations and carbon emissions can no longer be neglected within the factory of the future, and (iii) significant efforts are still needed to standardize, in terms of variables and KPIs, the adoption of ESG-centric strategies.