Vision
Industry 5.0 begins with people.
Industry 4.0 connected machines, sensors, data and processes. Industry 5.0 asks the broader question: what do we use technology for – and how must it be designed so that it genuinely strengthens people, organisations and society?
The vision
Human-centric, resilient, sustainable.
The answer does not lie in yet more automation for its own sake. The European Commission describes Industry 5.0 through three connected guiding principles – human-centric, resilient and sustainable – and explicitly understands them as an extension of, not a replacement for, Industry 4.0: away from pure productivity, towards an industry that serves people, makes operations more resilient and operates within ecological boundaries.
420+ translates this vision into the operational management of regulated product and batch processes. The platform connects operational work, responsibilities, evidence, releases and data integrity in one shared system logic. People continue to decide – the system ensures that these decisions remain traceable, consistent and verifiable.
Principle · Human-centric
Technology supports responsibility instead of displacing it.
Regulated processes depend on human decisions. A release does not become correct because it is automated; a measurement is not accurate because it was captured digitally; a work instruction does not replace the professional judgement of the person carrying it out.
420+ therefore does not move decisions into a black box, but structures the work: tasks are assigned to people and roles, SOPs are translated into traceable steps, measurements and evidence are created directly at the process, releases and blocks stay connected to their professional basis, and corrections are not overwritten but added in a traceable way.
This changes the role of software: no longer merely a tool for after-the-fact documentation, but an infrastructure that supports people in a structured way during execution, without taking the decision away from them.
For 420+, being human-centric does not mean less technology, but technology that makes human responsibility visible and effective.
Principle · Resilient
Processes must work even when something deviates.
Resilience shows not in trouble-free normal operation, but when measurements deviate, people change, inventory is blocked or decisions have to be reviewed later. Many operations respond to this with manual rework – gathering information from various systems, reconstructing responsibilities, assigning evidence after the fact. This makes organisations dependent on individual knowledge, memory and discipline.
420+ runs operational processes in a shared, state-based logic: tasks, batches, inventory, roles, releases, transactions and evidence stay connected. A deviation is therefore not only documented – it can trigger a follow-up task, a block or a review, and its origin stays linked to the further course.
The private, hash-chained ledger architecture adds an additional technical integrity layer to this operational logic: relevant events are continuously linked cryptographically, existing entries are not overwritten. The architecture is tamper-evident, not absolutely tamper-proof – it makes later changes detectable, provided that check values and verification mechanisms are adequately protected.
A resilient operation does not prevent every disruption. It does not lose control over its processes and data when a disruption occurs.
Principle · Sustainable
Less control effort, less duplication, more targeted use of resources.
Sustainability concerns more than energy and material. The way processes are documented, checked and monitored also consumes resources: duplicate data entry, documents assembled from many systems, checks only possible on site, paper, parallel software, additional physical tracking infrastructure.
420+ takes a different approach: evidence is created where the work takes place. A measurement, a batch movement, a release does not need to be reconstructed later for audit purposes – the process already contains history, responsibilities and evidence. Defined information and cryptographic check points can be made available to authorised bodies or independent auditors for digital verification, provided the technical setup and the regulatory framework allow it, without necessarily having to disclose all operational data.
This shifts compliance: from after-the-fact control to integrated process management, from reconstruction to continuous traceability, from blanket control effort to risk-based review.
This does not mean that on-site inspections or physical labelling are eliminated – depending on the market and legal framework they remain mandatory or professionally necessary.
Sustainable compliance does not mean less control. It means control with less avoidable use of resources.
Why a platform
One platform instead of individual solutions connected after the fact.
An evidence or integrity layer added afterwards can only capture the events that the connected systems make available to it completely and consistently. A separate document solution does not automatically know the state of a batch. A task management system does not necessarily know which release follows from an execution.
420+ is therefore built as an end-to-end operating system – from work and SOP execution through roles, batches, inventory, areas, documents, compliance, finance and intake to the overarching view in the Control Center. Precisely because these processes arise within the same platform, their history can be captured and connected without media breaks.
The ledger architecture is not a product alongside the product. It is the integrity layer of an operating system that already knows the relevant processes at the moment they are created.
Honestly framed
What Industry 5.0 means for 420+.
Industry 5.0 is not a certificate and not product conformity, but a vision for the use of technology. 420+ does not claim to define it fully or to fulfil all associated goals automatically – but it translates the three principles into concrete operational management: people lead and remain responsible. The system keeps states, evidence and decisions connected and does not rewrite the history. The operation does not lose the process context even in the event of deviations and changes. And oversight can become more targeted and resource-efficient through digital verification.
Sources: European Commission – “Industry 5.0 – Towards a sustainable, human-centric and resilient European industry” (2021) and the Industry 5.0 topic page of the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation.
Fifth industrial revolution
Welcome to the age of the fifth industrial revolution.
Industry 5.0 does not begin with another machine, but with a different idea of what technology should achieve.
People do not serve the system – the system supports people in exercising responsibility reliably. More data is not the goal, but consistent, traceable, verifiable data. Maximum automation is not the benchmark, but operational management that connects human responsibility, resilience and the conscious use of resources.
People lead. The system safeguards integrity.