NATAN: Antonio, hi. How are you doing? ANTONIO: Hi, great. How are you? NATAN: I'm very good. It is great to get together. How is the weather out there in Italy? ANTONIO: Yeah, exactly. It is everything going very well; kind of sunny right now, so after very rainy weeks, some very rainy weeks. NATAN: I want to start with something really simple. You know, we've been in this era of industry 4.0 for, like, ten years. What is your definition of Industry 4.0? You've done so much research about this. Your thesis is about this stuff. Is it something you can actually summarize? ANTONIO: Well, some people will say that Industry 4.0 is just a bundle of technologies that you put together to provide more efficiency, more productivity to the companies, you know, to manufacturing companies, industries, supply chains, and so on. So it's basically, if we want to say in a few words, let's say completely new technology stack of tools and protocols that are now coming together into a comprehensive cloud of new initiatives that are running. And we basically use that to provide companies and businesses with better performance, let's say. NATAN: Yeah. And one of the things I got excited when we started preparing for this is there's obviously, like, very well-established operation excellence faculty, you know, that comes along with industrial engineering, you know, the way it's been taught the past, you know, three, four decades, say. And it's evolved, you know, as industry evolved. But you've published more than 50 articles on this general topic of, you know, digital transformation, engineering, and industrial systems, and smart workforce, and all that kind of stuff. Like, what's your view? What's your perspective on the state of education and research in this field? I feel like, you know, we're trying to practice it, you know, building software and working with a lot of organizations that go through digital transformation. Where do you see academia fit in today? ANTONIO: From my perspective, academia should now overpass the industry 4.0 era, let's say. Right now, you know, there is a research period where, of course, academia, researchers, scientists, and even companies work together to manage a lot of challenges and new concepts to co-create new concepts. But now, the Fourth Industrial Revolution era is quite well-communicated, well-defined. So it's just a matter, for now, companies, users to implement that. So we know which are the technologies. We know that there are, of course, still some challenges, especially in the integration side because, of course, there are a lot of problems when you try to get together multiple technologies and when you talk about semantic interoperability, syntactic interoperability. So those are the most relevant issues right now, together with some, let's say, more hardware side issues, such as connectivity and so on. But from a research point of view, I believe, and especially in the industrial engineering and management field, I believe that now we have to make a step forward. And from this point of view, I think that the Industry 5.0 paradigm can help. I would say that it is not a complete future but can help to drive to the future because Industry 4.0 is entirely on technology. We could say that it is completely technology-centric. Industry 5.0, at least as it is largely known, is human-centric. There is this human-centricity pillar together with the focus on sustainability and resilience. And we are now trying to put back humans in the field and to give them, like, to make some sort of Copernican Revolution where we put again the humans are the central. But... NATAN: Like Renaissance. I think it's a great fit for, you know, Italy is kind of the birthplace of Renaissance, right? ANTONIO: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So -- NATAN: So you're doing an industrial...you're working on an industrial Renaissance effectively. ANTONIO: Hopefully, hopefully, so...But from my point of view, the Renaissance is not to put humans back, let's say, at the center but to put them back in the loop, which means to talk about the human-technology symbiosis, how we interact with technology because, of course, technology cannot replace humans. Humans cannot replace technology because each one of us has some weaknesses and strengths. And therefore, in the future, we should talk more about human-technology interaction, human-technology symbiosis rather than human centricity or technology centricity. So this is why I'm not completely, you know, agreeing with the human centricity pillar of the industry 5.0 NATAN: That's awesome because I really want to get into that and see what your...I don't know if critique is the right word or, like your, you know, how do you see the issues with the industry 5.0 and human centricity? But before we do that, let's back up for a second, okay? And I want to explain why I want to back up for a second. It's very easy to get into, like, the, you know, the buzzword and definitions and, like, having a real discussion. But you know what's really interesting? So I see your work and kind of see, like, maybe you like this or not, but, you know, you talked about Renaissance when talking about the next generation. You know, there was, like, Star Trek, and then Star Trek: Next Generation. So I feel like there's a generation shift in, like, the people who are doing the active research on this stuff. How did you get into this? Like, what makes a boy growing up in...where did you grow up in Italy? ANTONIO: Yeah, I grew up in the South. NATAN: So there's a lot of industry down there? ANTONIO: Calabria region. I grew up at the very end of the booth. You know that Italy has this booth section, and I grew up here. It is actually not a very largely industrialized region, let's say. But there are some, let's say, lighthouses, as I would say. So there are some very few but very interesting companies, businesses. And this is why also I started to focus not just on giving efficiency or finding new solutions for efficiency, productivity but I tried to ask myself also about new ways of work, the future of work. NATAN: But, Antonio, I'm really interested in what draws young talent into operations as opposed to, like, you could have done anything. You could have done finance, or marketing, whatever. And then something happened in, I don't know, in your 20s, and you go like, hmm, this manufacturing stuff, that's cool. I'm going to do that. What was that? ANTONIO: You know, Italian boys, I guess, they have this passion for cars... NATAN: Oh. [chuckles] ANTONIO: And for the motor arena. And, of course, these very expensive and cool cars like Ferrari, Lamborghini. NATAN: Lamborghini, yeah. ANTONIO: Everyone was, at least at my age, wanted to go and work and give contribution to these guys to win, for example, the championship. This is kind of things that usually move a young guy to this kind of sector. NATAN: What is your first sort of memory that you were like, wow, this is manufacturing? Like, do you remember your first shop floor, and you were like, I can't believe that this is how things are made? Did you have a moment like that? ANTONIO: Yeah, yeah, yeah. NATAN: What was that? ANTONIO: I remember one of my first company visits when I was studying. It was in an oil and gas company here. They have a huge industrial site here where they build and construct pumps to pump the oil and petroleum from the specific well sites. And it was very interesting to see how actually things they were building were so big. Because when you think about a manufacturing company, you can think about maybe a company doing some, I don't know, very small stuff, very small items. But, actually, it's a network of companies that they work together. They collaborate in global supply chains, and they exchange materials. They exchange work in progresses and so on to build more and more bigger things. NATAN: Cool. ANTONIO: So it was kind of cool to see how they work together in these huge sites with the help of robots as well and machines to build this stuff. NATAN: Cool. So fast forward for today; just one more piece of background before we go into the meat of, you know, what's the value of human centricity? And how does it apply to, you know, value-driven industry 5.0? Which is, like, a topic that I think you can help us understand. Walk me through, like, the high level of your research and, like, what are you actually working on now that is exciting you? ANTONIO: Yeah. Just let me give you a short introduction just to understand my background. So I started to work during my studies in this research lab, the Modeling & Simulation Center - Laboratory of Enterprise Solutions at the University of Calabria. And I entered this team, this project team that was working at that time on a project led by the NASA Kennedy Space Center on a moon mission simulation. It was nice because this laboratory, you know, has a very long history in modeling and simulation when it was not even one of the 4.0 the enabling technologies. So they were kind of some people they knew already something was going on in the future. I started to work here as some kind of simulation guy, so designing, developing, and testing simulation models. We were doing some virtual reality projects exactly from this point of view. And then it basically completely blew out my mind, and I completely fell in love with this field. Because actually, it's a modeling and simulation lab, but the main focus is on industrial systems engineering. So this is why I started to make some analysis also and some work in this area. My main research is profiled in different areas. I would say that the major trend is exactly the human-centered manufacturing systems, so how to design prototypes and solutions for smart operators based on augmented reality, intelligent voice assistance, and how we can exploit these kinds of solutions in the assembly systems or in maintenance, maybe operations. And, of course, how we can analyze better human-robot and human-machine symbiosis. For example, recently, we started to analyze how humans interact with robots and with machine by checking their emotions. So, you know, when we talk about the human-robot interaction, we always think about this interaction as a sequence of actions, you know, it's just I do something, and then it goes to the robot, and the robot gives me back the material, and so on. But when we want to move forward in this revolution, we need also to think about more human aspects like emotions because if I have to interact with something like robots, I have to think about also my, let's say, psychological health, and so on. NATAN: It's like emotional ergonomics. You're going to put all this technology, whether it's a robot or, I don't know, a smart machine or a very sophisticated software system, and then you still need to help the humans feel...is respected the right word? ANTONIO: Yeah, yeah. And that's correct because, you know, people have different ways to interact. So there are some people that are more emotional than others. They are not scared of interacting with a robot. Today, I believe that the real possibility that we have is that we can adapt technology to the capabilities and the requests from each person. NATAN: Antonio, what is a good example (I'm trying to think because it is so interesting) that you've run across your research or just in the wild of something like that, you know, where there's a technology or a system that is designed, you know, to take basically human ethics and respect and, like, you know, put people in the center that is concrete? You know, we understand the research topic, okay? We understand the framing. But is there a real-world example you can share? ANTONIO: Well, I can make some real-world examples based on our research project that we are running. NATAN: Please. ANTONIO: A research project ongoing with CRF. It's the research center from Stellantis Group from Fiat, Fiat Group, you know, the car [inaudible 12:42] NATAN: Of course. ANTONIO: And we are running right now this project on the future of assembly systems because, of course, in assembly systems right now...or they are very manual. So there is a very strong component of the humans, or they are very automated. So there are these huge robots assembling the cars, doing the painting, and so on. NATAN: But there's a lot of middle ground, right? ANTONIO: But there is a lot of gray area where we need to interact. And for example, we are designing right now mobile robots in collaboration with some other companies within the consortium. Actually, we have to work together, and the robot should also anticipate the moves of the human because we need to always have productivity in mind, you know, so efficiency in mind. So the robots should know what should be done, which is the work cycles, what should be done, and so on. But, at the same time, should also monitor the human. So, on the other side, there is some ambient intelligence. There is some capability to understand the human request and even, of course, anticipate. Because for example, if I need a tool, a screwdriver, for example, to use on a car door, I should not wait for the robot to go and pick the screwdriver and give me the screwdriver. But the robot should be already there at the moment, in the exact moment I need the screwdriver. NATAN: So let's tie this back to, like, now we're finally getting to the...hopefully, we'll have some good Renaissance controversy here. What is 5.0? Like, we started from 4.0. And I think it's, like, pretty nice that the EU is, like, pushing research and investing in, like, 5.0. But what is it, and, like, how should people think about what's 5.0? And do we actually need another term? And define it. ANTONIO: If I would summarize Industry 5.0, it is some kind of like a multi-objective problem that we have in front of us. Because we have to optimize and we have to increase the role of people and their well-being. They're the social component of industries. We have sustainability. We need to go more sustainable because we know the impact that this word has on our own lives. And we have to go resilience because, of course, we know from what happened until a few years ago now. NATAN: Yeah, with the supply chain getting to just-in-time a little bit too much just-in-time. ANTONIO: Yeah. You know, there are lots of solutions that we can implement to become more resilient: digitalization. I'm not saying the application because this is something you were used to doing when we were starting at the beginning. And they were saying, "Okay, we have to improve." But now we are talking about some lean supply chain management, you know, that is not just-in-time or some very advanced approaches. But it's also a new way of thinking about how we are doing procurement, which suppliers we need to prioritize. For example, we have to prioritize suppliers that have a greener, let's say, footprint, and so on. So maybe going more local rather than being always global because, of course, being local allows us to be faster in some cases. NATAN: Yep. So now we have this baseline. What's your critique or your disagreement with, like, the human aspect of this next wave of Industry 5.0? Where is it going? And what do you agree and disagree with? ANTONIO: You know, it's not just whether I agree or whether I disagree. But I think that it's a first step towards my vision; at least, that I don't know if it would make sense for everyone. But it's my vision, my idea of the future for industries, you know. And this was starting up a few years ago when we published the paper on value-driven industry 5.0. So, you know, because there is some confusion even in the research, in scientifically [inaudible 16:47], there is some confusion about using this terminology. So there are some people who will say that Industry 5.0 is human-robot collaboration. Or they used to say that Industry 5.0 is making humans at the center, and therefore they publish papers on augmented reality tools. But I believe that the focus should be a little bit different. So I'm not saying that we need an industry 6.0, or 7.0, or 8.0. But we need to reconfigure a little bit the concept that we have. So, when we talk about human centricity, I believe that, again, we have to emphasize a little bit the importance of human values in the manufacturing industry. We have to develop innovations. We have to develop solutions and technology that takes into account this aspect for a better well-being, a better interaction, and, ultimately, higher performance, higher productivity, and well-being. So, in the end, we have the best of both worlds, you know, social welfare on one side but also advantages and benefits for companies that we know are what push companies to invest in this. NATAN: It's so counterintuitive because, like, just thematically, 5.0 comes after 4.0. And typically, when we talk about those X.0 in whatever industry, usually, the required set of buzzwords follow. But, basically, what you're saying is, like, you're going to go to leaders and say, "Hey, think about the emotions of your people, think about how you respect them, think about the ethical space that they exist, and think about tools to help get all those requirements as part of your production system, essentially." That's what I'm hearing. Is that a good way to summarize this? ANTONIO: Yeah. You know, there are a lot of aspects that you can consider when it comes to, let's say, human values. I was having, for example, this very interesting discussion a few days ago about governance. When it comes to governance of new technology, think about the digital twin technology. We try to create digital twins today of everything because we think that that's the future, and we want to create the digital twin of a mobile phone, the digital twin of a smart factory, the digital -- NATAN: Of our brain, you know. It's like [laughs] -- ANTONIO: We want our own digital twin because it can manage our health and make predictions on our health. So it's a lot of...as you said at the beginning of this conversation, that right now there is a lot of marketing because, of course, everyone should kind of sell their own products. And, of course, everyone is trying to push for their vision. But, at the moment, more important, from my point of view, to have a better perspective, to make clear which is the scenario and where we want to go. Because otherwise, there is just a lot of confusion on terminology on using the wrong dictionary here. And we do not really know what we are trying to build, as you correctly said. So what our generation wants to -- NATAN: Wants to leave behind, yeah. ANTONIO: To our children, next generation. So the concept is that, from my point of view, it's very interesting to think about how technologies enabling human-machine symbiosis can be designed to embody these human values and which are also the steps that engineers and designers need in such design projects. So that is, I believe, a very, you know, challenging thing. NATAN: So, Antonio, on this note, I think this is a really great point to summarize this part of our conversation, which I think, you know, we'll need to continue because, as you say, it's, like, what do we leave to the next generation or our children? It's a bold call to action for people who, like me, who make products in technology and certainly take part [laughs] in...we also market and use those buzzwords. But, like, to keep in mind that there's a real need for inserting, you know, those values, those ethical design requirements and focus on respect for people on the shop floor into the systems that we're building. I cannot agree more. And it's a topic for an additional conversation. We'll include some of your research in the comments. But I want to thank you for coming. It was great. I can't wait to see what the new work with the EU on 5.0 brings. Stay in touch and come to us again very soon. ANTONIO: Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.