Insights from Polytechnic Institute of Braganca: Exploring the future and sustainability in Manufacturing
We continued to investigate the future of Manufacturing with openZDM experts. This time, we had a pleasure to interview Paulo Leitao, Professor at Instituto Politécnico de Bragança.
1. What emerging trends or technologies do you believe will drive the future of manufacturing, and what potential implications could they have on industries and society?
The future of manufacturing will be driven by the increasing use of several disruptive technologies, acting at both the physical and virtual levels, and potentially integrating both levels under the perspective of industrial cyber-physical systems. At a physical level, the increasing use of intelligent and collaborative robots and the intense use of virtual/augmented/mixed reality will drastically change the shopfloor and how operations will be performed and how the interaction between humans and systems will be achieved.
At a more virtual and cyber level, the increased penetration of digitalization, the massive use of artificial intelligence algorithms and the adoption of digital twins will greatly increase production efficiency, increase responsiveness and reconfigurability, decrease production defects, and increase productivity while promoting circularity.
2. What are the key challenges in the widespread adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in manufacturing, and what research efforts are being made to address these challenges?
One of the key challenges in the widespread adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies is the stakeholders’ resistance to change and to adopt disruptive technologies. In fact, for several years there was the saying “If it works don’t change”.
With a growing adoption of industry 4.0 technologies and the demonstration of the benefits and impacts in their businesses, widespread adoption will be facilitated. In this context, a main research direction should be devoted to the capacitation and demonstration of the maturity and benefits of the use of digital technologies.
Another aspect to be considered in these new automated and intelligent systems is the symbiotic integration of humans, since they still remain the more flexible players in such systems. For this purpose, key research efforts should be devoted to developing methodologies that consider the human-centric perspective and the use of digital technologies to simplify their integration at Human-in-the-Loop and Human-in-the-Mesh levels.
3. From a research perspective, what collaborative efforts or interdisciplinary approaches do you think are essential to foster innovation and address the complex challenges faced by the manufacturing industry in the coming years?
Industry 5.0 will have deep societal impacts. The employment patterns will evolve, driven mainly by strong technological needs and there is an increasing need to design research that is usable by, with and for humans. Alongside, the skills requirements will also evolve, making the human workforce’s need for adaptation paramount, considering requalification and up-skilling perspectives, as they will drastically change from a “force world” into a more “technical and brain world”.
Short Biography
Paulo Leitao received the Habilitation in Informatics Engineering in 2018 by University of Porto, and the PhD, Master and Bachelor degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering by Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto in 2004, 1997 and 1993, respectively. From 1993 to 1999 he developed research activities at the CIM Centre of Porto, from 1999 to 2000 at IDIT – Institute for Development and Innovation in Technology, from 2009 to 2017 at LIACC – Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science Laboratory, and since 2018 at CeDRI – Research Centre in Digitalization and Intelligent Robotics, where he is its scientific coordinator. He joined the Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Portugal, in 1995, where he is Full Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering. He served as Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering from 2009 to 2015, Vice-President of Directive Board of School of Technology and Management from 2004 to 2009, President of the Pedagogical Council of School of Technology and Management during 2000 and Vice-President of Scientific Council of School of Technology and Management from 2001 to 2004.
