What if operators are not skilled? How to embrace participation and digital technology in manufacturing

Book chapter, 2025

This chapter describes how to embrace participation and digital technologies in the manufacturing industry. A framework, PArticipative Readiness Level (PARL) was designed to support companies to work concretely with organizational aspects, the operator role and the production system and ranges from -1 to 5. PARL was based on six theoretical concepts: participative innovation, participative safety, intelligent teams, operator 4.0/operator 5.0, digital literacy and lean. Three cases were used to show how PARL can be used to support companies in reaching Industry 5.0: 1) onboarding for a battery manufacturing process through immersive training, 2) efficient safety work in the forest industry and 3) emergency production for manual assembly of face masks. PARL was useful in describing the current state as well as for identifying the next steps for companies to boost wide participation as well as how to embrace digital technologies.