Integrating Human Factors into Operations Management Education in the Industry 5.0 era

The era of Industry 5.0 emphasizes human centrality, sustainability, and resilience, posing new requirements for the direction of talent cultivation in modern higher education. Engineering education is also adapting and leading the development of Industry 5.0. This study proposes an innovative framework integrating human factors into the modern operations management education system in higher education. Operations management involves the management of the entire process, including supply chain, inventory, quality control, etc. With the evolution from Industry 4.0 to 5.0, operations management is centered on humans, emphasizing human-machine collaboration and employee empowerment. Therefore, the content of teaching needs to be adjusted to help students learn how to use human factors principles to optimize work processes, reduce employee fatigue, and mitigate risk. This paper proposes the application of human factors in operations management by creating a virtual, interconnected production environment that simulates real assembly lines, detects human factors issues, and reduces deviations through numerical analysis. This protocol enables the identification and evaluation of ergonomic risks at the design stage, providing targeted improvement measures. This protocol helps students understand how to reduce the incidence of accidents, improve work efficiency, and reduce the additional costs associated with corrective interventions during the teaching of operations management. Through digital ergonomics, students can comprehend and become proficient in ergonomic risk evaluation methods. Therefore, this paper analyzes how to better integrate human factors into operations management, attaining the integration of engineering technology and human factors, and proposing new ideas and directions for education and practice in the field of operations management. In future applications, combining human factors with human digital twin (HDT) and Artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) will empower smart manufacturing and enable human-centric smart manufacturing in engineering practice.