Högskolan i Skövde

Human centricity has become a central but increasingly diluted concept in contemporary industrial development. This brief article argues that many supposedly human-centric production systems remain dependent on human compensation rather than genuine human-centred design. Drawing on resilience engineering, cognitive systems engineering, and the literature on invisible work, the article introduces the concept of the human centricity illusion: a situation where humans are placed at the centre of the system primarily as adaptive buffers who absorb variability, compensate for system flaws, and keep production stable through undocumented workarounds. The article distinguishes between flexibility as competence and flexibility as compensation, and proposes that truly human-centric systems should preserve human adaptability as a strategic resource rather than consume it as a routine operational requirement. Human centricity is therefore framed not as a matter of intention or rhetoric, but as a question of socio-technical system design, governance, incentives, and protected capacity for learning and resilience.