Citation: Turner, C.; Oyekan, J.; Garn, W.; Duggan, C.; Abdou, K. Industry 5.0 and the Circular Economy: Utilizing LCA with Intelligent Products. Sustainability 2022, 14, 14847. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su142214847 Academic Editor: Antonella Petrillo Received: 14 September 2022 Accepted: 7 November 2022 Published: 10 November 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article Industry 5.0 and the Circular Economy: Utilizing LCA with Intelligent Products Chris Turner 1, * , John Oyekan 2 , Wolfgang Garn 1 , Cian Duggan 3 and Khaled Abdou 3 1 Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK 2 Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield, Portobello Street, Sheffield S1 3JD, UK 3 Carbon Intelligence, 5th Floor, 103-113 Regent Street, London W1B 4HL, UK * Correspondence: christopher.turner@surrey.ac.uk Abstract: While the move towards Industry 4.0 has motivated a re-evaluation of how a manufacturing organization should operate in light of the availability of a new generation of digital production equipment, the new emphasis is on human worker inclusion to provide decision making activities or physical actions (at decision nodes) within an otherwise automated process flow; termed by some authors as Industry 5.0 and seen as related to the earlier Japanese Society 5.0 concept (seeking to address wider social and environmental problems with the latest developments in digital system, artificial Intelligence and automation solutions). As motivated by the EU the Industry 5.0 paradigm can be seen as a movement to address infrastructural resilience, employee and environmental concerns in industrial settings. This is coupled with a greater awareness of environmental issues, especially those related to Carbon output at production and throughout manufactured products lifecycle. This paper proposes the concept of dynamic Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), enabled by the functionality possible with intelligent products. A particular focus of this paper is that of human in the loop assisted decision making for end-of-life disassembly of products and the role intelligent products can perform in achieving sustainable reuse of components and materials. It is concluded by this research that intelligent products must provide auditable data to support the achievement of net zero carbon and circular economy goals. The role of the human in moving towards net zero production, through the increased understanding and arbitration powers over information and decisions, is paramount; this opportunity is further enabled through the use of intelligent products. Keywords: intelligent products; smart products; Industry 4.0; Industry 5.0; Society 5.0; circular economy; human centric manufacturing; human in the loop; Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) 1. Introduction From a paradigm shift that began in 2011 the move towards Industry 4.0 has motivated a re-evaluation of how a manufacturing organization should operate in light of the availabil- ity of a new generation of digital production equipment and computer-based systems [1]. The big data revolution has wrought significant change in the service sector, allowing greater understanding of customer needs and additional insights for the development of new products. In an industrial context big data coupled with Internet of Things (IoT) com- munication technology and the availability of low-cost miniaturized sensors have provided the potential for a new level of awareness on the current status of shop floor machine and robot operation and the establishment of a real time picture of production status available to workers and management alike. Advances in production machine and industrial robot control through the use of Artificial Intelligence have led to new automation solutions for the production line, with some authors forecasting the prospect of the fully autonomous ‘lights out’ factory to become the norm rather than the exception (moving beyond the automation of low complexity repetitive processes). This paper highlights a new emphasis Sustainability 2022, 14, 14847. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142214847 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability