A Human Digital-Twin-Based Framework Driving Human Centricity towards Industry 5.0

This work presents a digital-twin-based framework focused on orchestrating human-centered processes toward Industry 5.0. By including workers and their digital replicas in the loop of the digital twin, the proposed framework extends the traditional model of the factory’s digital twin, which instead does not adequately consider the human component. The overall goal of the authors is to provide a reference architecture to manufacturing companies for a digital-twin-based platform that promotes harmonization and orchestration between humans and (physical and virtual) machines through the monitoring, simulation, and optimization of their interactions. In addition, the platform enhances the interactions of the stakeholders with the digital twin, considering that the latter cannot always be fully autonomous, and it can require human intervention. The paper also presents an implemented scenario adhering to the proposed framework’s specifications, which is also validated with a real case study set in a factory plant that produces wooden furniture, thus demonstrating the validity of the overall proposed approach.