Fusion Skills and Industry 5.0: Conceptions and Challenges

*John Mitchell and David Guile*

## **Abstract**

The nature of work is changing rapidly, driven by the digital technologies that underpin industry 5.0. It has been argued worldwide that engineering education must adapt to these changes which have the potential to rewrite the core curriculum across engineering as a broader range of skills compete with traditional engineering knowledge. Although it is clear that skills such as data science, machine learning and AI will become fundamental skills of the future it is less clear how these should be integrated into existing engineering education curricula to ensure relevance of graduates. This chapter looks at the nature of future fusion skills and the range of strategies that might be adopted to integrated these into the existing engineering education curriculum.

**Keywords:** Digital Skills, Curriculum Development

### **1. Introduction**

Up until the impact of the global pandemic known colloquially as Covid-19, the engineering education community and the industry sectors its graduates support had been involved in a debate over the necessary skills of an engineering graduate for some time. That debate in the UK reflected, on the one hand, the longstanding concern as, for example, the IET's annual Skills and Demand in Industry Survey [1] highlighted, an "estimated annual shortfall of 59,000 new engineering graduates and technicians, a deficit which only continues to get worse." ([1], p. 2), with 48% reporting difficulties in respect to the skills available – of these 73% attributed this to "Problem with candidates who have academic knowledge but lack workplace skills" ([1], p. 16). And, on the other hand, a response to the perceived challenge posed by some developments associated with the *4th Industrial Revolution* and prospect of Industry 5.0 that will require new, rather than additional, engineering skills [2].

Since the future is open to debate and discussion, the aim of this chapter is to present scenario-based perspectives [3, 4] on the development of global engineering education in response to them. The chapter is therefore structured as follows. It starts by offering a concise explanation of the concept of *the 4th Industrial Revolution* and its associated promise (elimination of environmental problems) and threats (automation). It then traces the emergence of Industry and Society 5.0 out of the 4IR to show their close association with, and significant difference from, one another. Next, the chapter addresses the issue of engineering and specialisation

by considering the relationship between recent innovations in engineering education and current projections of new digital skill needs, and the extent to which the former will provide the foundation for delivering the latter. The chapter problematises this assumed trajectory of development by introducing the concept of *fusion skills* [5]. This concept represents an attempt to rethink the longstanding debate about the extent to which 'machines' are deployed to automate or augment human work through the deployment of AI in workplaces and occupations, by identifying eight new skills that are far more radical and far reaching than the concept of digital skills. Having done so, the chapter concludes by outlining 2 scenarios depicting different options for the development of the *engineering degree for Industry 5.0*, based on the introduction of fusion skills into traditional single subject and integrated or interdisciplinary engineering degrees.
