Industry 5.0 principles on track: INESC TEC leads project to transform European rail 

INESC TEC is leading a European project that will make rail freight transportation safer, more reliable and more efficient. To achieve this, the project will put Industry 5.0 principles on track, helping Europe stay on board with the future digital transformation of the rail ecosystem. 

The journey of the tRail5.0 project – Driving the digital transformation of the European rail ecosystem towards Industry 5.0 – began this month with the kick-off meeting. Over the next three years, the initiative aims to develop recommendations for integrating resilient, sustainable and human-centred solutions into the European rail sector. 

Joining INESC TEC are Zaragoza Logistics Center – ZLC (Spain) and Université Gustave Eiffel (France), forming an interdisciplinary team representing the Atlantic Corridor, the tRail5.0 use case; the corridor stretches from the ports along the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula to the port cities of northern France and the Franco-German cross-border region, including Strasbourg and Mannheim. 

According to Ricardo Zimmermann, project coordinator and researcher at INESC TEC, INESC TEC’s contribution to the initiative’s success is grounded in the “vast experience in key areas like supply chain management, transport, digital transformation and Industry 5.0 across a range of contexts”. 

“This expertise is complemented by strong capabilities in studying sociotechnical systems and their direct relationship with the principles underpinning Industry 5.0. It’s a complete, highly qualified team, ready to make a very significant contribution to the journey that is now beginning,” explained the researcher. 

The three partners will combine scientific and operational expertise in systems engineering, logistics, transport economics and social sciences to assess how human teams interact with emerging Industry 5.0 technologies, such as explainable Artificial Intelligence, digital twins, prescriptive maintenance and collaborative robotics. 

Rather than developing new technologies, tRail5.0 adopts an exploratory approach focused on low Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) and will prioritise evidence-based analysis to formulate recommendations and proposals. 

The project will directly contribute to the objectives of the European Rail Joint Undertaking (EU-Rail) and the EU-Rail Master Plan, supporting the development of a more competitive, resilient and future-ready European rail system. The initiative secured almost €600K in European funding and will run until February 2029.