The industry is a key driver of economic development. However, changes caused by introduction of modern technologies, and increasing complexity of products and production, directly affect the industrial enterprises and workers. The critics of the Industry 4.0 paradigm emphasized its orientation to new technologies and digitalization in a technocratic way. Therefore, the new industrial paradigm Industry 5.0 appeared very soon and automatically triggered a debate about the role of, and reasons for applying, the new paradigm. Industry 5.0 is complementing the existing Industry 4.0 paradigm with the orientation to the worker who has an important role in the production process, and that role has been emphasized during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this research, there is a brief discussion on main drivers and enablers for introduction of these new paradigms, then a literature-based analysis is carried out to highlight the differences between two paradigms from three important aspects—people, organization, and technology. The conclusion emphasizes the main features and concerns regarding the movement towards Industry 5.0, and the general conclusion is that there is a significant change of the main research aims from sustainability towards human-centricity. At the end, the analysis of maturity models that evaluates enterprises’ readiness to introduce features of new paradigms is given as well.

Sustainatableble development assumes the meeting of humanity’s everyday needs and development goals while sustaining the ability of nature to provide the resources and ecosystem on which the economy and society depend. It means that an increase of economic benefit cannot be a single optimization problem anymore, instead, the multi-criteria approach is used with the accent on ecology and social welfare. However, it is not easy to harmonize these aims with machining, which is a well known industrial pollutant. On the other hand, new industrial paradigms such as Industry 4.0/5.0, are driving toward the smart concept that collects data from the manufacturing process and optimizes it in accordance with productivity and/or ecologic aims. In this research, the smart concept is used through the development of the multi-criteria decision support system for the selection of the optimal machining process in terms of sustainability. In the case of milling process selection, it has been demonstrated that green machining, without a multi-criteria approach, will always remain an interesting research option, but not a replacement for conventional machining. However, when applying realistic ecological and social criteria, green machining becomes a first choice imperative. The multi-criteria decision-making PROMETHEE method is used for the comparison and ranking, and validation of results is made through criteria weights sensitivity analysis. The contribution of this concept is that it could also be applied to other manufacturing processes.

New trends in industry emphasize green and sustainable production on the one hand and personalized or individualized production on the other hand. Introducing new manufacturing technologies and materials to integrate the customer’s specific requirements into the product, while keeping the focus on environmental footprint, becomes a serious challenge. As a result, new production paradigms are developed to keep up with new trends. The most known Industry 4.0 paradigm is oriented towards new technologies and digitalization. Recently, Industry 5.0 appeared as a supplement to the existing Industry 4.0 paradigm, oriented to sustainability and the worker. A multidisciplinary approach is necessary to address these challenges. The Industry 5.0 paradigm’s main pillars—human centricity, resilience, and sustainability—are also pillars of the multidisciplinary approach used in this research. A human-centric approach includes workforce reskilling and acquiring new technologies to ensure that technology serves to enhance human work, while creating a supportive and inclusive work environment and prioritizing employee engagement and wellbeing. Resilience as a second pillar is related to the ability of manufacturing systems and processes to adapt to changing conditions to remain robust and flexible, and sustainability is an important and long-term requirement of this multidisciplinary approach. Based on the research part of the Erasmus+ ExCurS project, particularly research focused on application and training related to digital twins, an advanced concept of organizational sustainability is presented in this paper. The concept of organizational sustainability is realized through the usage of key digital twin technologies aligned with human-centric approaches. A new prototype of a digital twin that optimizes an assembly system based on a developed algorithm and humanoid decision-making is provided as a proof of concept. The human-centric digital twin for industrial application is presented through a case study of personalized products.