Digital and Workforce Qualifications as Potential Industry 5.0 Enablers in Portuguese Firms: An Exploratory Analysis Based on the IMPULS Framework

Background: Organizations face increasing pressure to sustain economic performance while simultaneously addressing the demands of sustainability, resilience, and human-centered practices. Thus, this study analyzes how the maturity dimensions established for Industry 4.0 (I4.0) can facilitate the transition to Industry 5.0 (I5.0) by assessing the digital capabilities and workforce of Portuguese companies with systems capable of transitioning to smart factories. Methods: Shift4.0 survey data, based on an adaptation of the IMPULS model, were analyzed for 380 firms with complete responses to the smart factory and smart operations items. Principal axis factoring (PAF) with oblimin rotation was used to explore the underlying factor structure. Sectoral differences in factor scores were assessed using Welch’s ANOVA, followed by Games–Howell post hoc comparisons, while differences in workforce-related items were examined using the Kruskal–Wallis test, followed by Dunn–Bonferroni comparisons. Results: Two moderately correlated factors emerged: Operational Digital Integration and Automation, and Digital Infrastructure and IT Security. The first did not differ across sectors; the second and both workforce items (Employees Skill Sets and Skills Acquisition) did. Most firms scored at low maturity levels. Conclusions: The exploratory, cross-sectional findings are not a direct I5.0 readiness measure. They suggest that an item-level structure can reveal capability profiles concealed by minimum-score aggregation, and that infrastructure and workforce capabilities, potential I5.0 enablers, are unevenly distributed across sectors among responding firms with production operations.