Industry 5.0 in a Metalworking SME: A Quantitative Assessment of Resilience, Sustainability, People-Centredness, and Digital Maturity

This study examines the extent to which a medium-sized Portuguese metalworking company, engaged in the production of aluminium goods for residential exterior applications, has embedded the three foundational pillars of Industry 5.0 - organisational resilience, environmental sustainability, and a people-centred strategy - together with digital maturity as a critical enabling dimension into its operational and strategic practices, with the aim of producing an empirically grounded, multi-vector maturity profile capable of informing strategic decision-making aligned with the European Union’s vision for responsible industrial transformation. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire administered face-to-face to 20 managers and second-line supervisors spanning all six organisational departments, combining a bespoke 48-item Likert-scale instrument (1 = Strongly Disagree; 5 = Strongly Agree) addressing resilience, sustainability, and people-centred dimensions with the European Commission’s validated Open DMAT instrument for digital maturity. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed using Minitab Statistics and MS Excel. The company achieved an overall digital maturity score of 43% (Open DMAT). Resilience scores clustered around the scale-point 3.0 (“Partially Agree”) (median = 3.0 across items), with interdepartmental coordination as the most critical deficit (mean = 2.444). Sustainability exhibited a differentiated profile: use of recyclable materials scored highest (mean = 4.150), while sustainability as a market development driver remained undervalued (mean = 2.563). The people-centred vector attained the strongest overall performance, led by worker participation culture (mean = 4.105), though investment in ergonomic workstations requires reinforcement (mean = 3.056). This study provides an empirically grounded, simultaneous assessment of the three Industry 5.0 pillars, together with digital maturity as an enabling dimension, in a single Portuguese metalworking SME, combining a bespoke organisational survey with the EU-endorsed Open DMAT instrument, and fills a gap in the empirical literature on export-oriented manufacturers navigating the sustainability and digitalisation transition mandated by European industrial policy. The single-organisation design limits external generalisability; future research should extend the analysis to cross-sector comparative studies and longitudinal designs. The maturity profiles produced here enable practitioners to prioritise investment in data governance (Open DMAT score: 25%), interdepartmental integration, AI-enabled quality inspection, and ergonomic workstation infrastructure as the highest-leverage enablers of Industry 5.0 adoption.