The Fourth Industrial Revolution is radically reshaping the procedures and the manufacturing environments through the digitalization process. The digitalization process can change according to the context and to specific solutions, and it is able to modify manufacturing systems and production areas. All the employees are directly affected by the transformation of the working environment, manufacturing tools, and working conditions and by the increasing need for new competencies. In this context, it is crucial to identify new and emerging hazards concerning the health and safety of the employees to ensure a conscious and safe digital transformation for everyone involved. In this regard, the paper presents the state of the research and defines seven areas of interest for a safe and harmless digital transformation for the employees, drawing attention to the hazards in the different technological areas. The state of the research unveils the absence of detailed analysis to identify specific hazards of 4.0 technologies. Therefore, every specific 4.0 technologies is analyzed by an extensive review to provide a comprehensive matrix of new and emerging hazards for health and safety within digitalized manufacturing systems. The results can help manufacturing organizations to perform robust risk assessments for worker when introducing specific 4.0 technologies.

The increasing usage of cobot applications reshapes work environments and working conditions, requiring specific advancements in organizational practices for health and safety. Enterprises should shift from a technocentric risk management approach to considering cobot application as socio-technical systems, for which a resilience engineering approach is beneficial. This study presents an instantiation of the resilience analysis grid in cobot applications with the aim of measuring resilience potentials in terms of the four cornerstones of resilience engineering (respond, learn, monitor, and anticipate). The assessment has been provided via a questionnaire to 15 companies making use of cobot applications. Results revealed that companies mainly focus on the risk assessment of cobot applications with a traditional view of machine-centric safety, paying less attention to assessing contexts and process variables. This observation seems to arise mainly due to the lack of formally available safety methods or limited guidance from technical standards. Additionally, traditional industrial approaches to risk management lack monitoring of several risks that are essential for managing resilience, defined as the adaptive capacity of people, organizations, and human–machine systems. In addition, companies strongly rely on data from the cobot manufacturer for their safety assessment. The resilience analysis grid was confirmed as a valuable assessment tool for the participating companies to identify improvement areas and assess health and safety from a resilience engineering perspective.

This study applies Safety II principles within a storytelling- and RAG-based questionnaire to explore how resilience engineering (RE) principles and practices are perceived and implemented in Italy’s manufacturing sector. Before completing the questionnaire, accident and near-miss scenarios were presented through narrative stories. The cross-sectional study on 334 companies reveals that Monitor and Respond are prioritized over Anticipate and Learn, with medium-large companies and those adopting technological innovations showing more advanced resilience-oriented OSH management practices. The study emphasizes the importance of company size and technological adoption in shaping safety practices, recommending investment in innovative solutions and fostering a culture that addresses near misses to prevent severe accidents and support continuous improvement.