Quality is one of the most important contributors to products’ success in the market and essential input for design and manufacturing. Historically, quality definitions evolved over time but with significant domain-specific differences. One example of these emerging differences is the human-centric, subjective approach to quality. Current Quality 4.0 models, in most cases, are derivatives from the Total Quality Management (TQM) way, solely based on hopes for Data-Driven approaches to solving problems, with the lack of a human-centric operator approach. Industry 4.0 and its associated digital technologies promise to change this notion and make formerly subjective quality dimensions measurable on a scale as input for design and manufacturing. This leads to an opportunity to bridge the current gap and streamline the Quality and Operator in a holistic, data-informed, and digital technology-enabled way. This paper introduces a Quality 4.0 transformation as a vision for the future of Human – Machine symbiosis in the context of Operator 5.0 for intelligent manufacturing systems. We discuss what needs to be added to Quality 4.0 to achieve the requirements set for Operator 5.0 This work suggests how to enrich smart manufacturing systems from a human-centric perspective with Operator 5.0 making own, informed decisions based on data, experience, and tacit knowledge.