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Accelerating Early Product Design with AISpencer Acain - Siemens - Tessent Embedded AnalyticsFeb 05, 2025 |
Designing new products to meet increasing demands for innovation as well as other key concerns such as sustainability is a challenge faced by designers in every industry. Creating next generation products will require leveraging existing data in smarter ways, accelerating key decision making with AI and accounting for cutting-edge manufacturing processes and supply chain considerations from the very beginning of the design process.
In a recent podcast, guests Boris Scharinger, Senior Innovation Manager and Technology Strategist for Siemens Digital Industries, and Dr. Justin Hodges, Senior AI/ML Technical Specialist in Product Management for Siemens Digital Industries Software sat down to examine the impact of AI during the crucial early stages of the product design process.
Check out the full episode here or keep reading for a summary of the highlights of that conversation.
AI accelerates decision making
One of the important ways Justin highlights AI effecting the early design process is in its ability to be a decision support system. One of the obvious applications of AI is in its ability to comb through vast quantities of data which, when combined with the natural language processing abilities of generative AI, can provide a faster, smarter way to interact with everything from past design data to the results of a new product simulation.
While valuable, this type of feedback isn't the only way AI can support the early decision-making process. By leveraging past and current simulation data, a machine learning model can be trained to accurately predict how a part or product, even one in the early stages of prototyping, will behave without ever having to build one and without running lengthy simulations. This new paradigm allows designers to benefit from true real-time feedback on how any changes they make will affect the final design, something that was never possible in the past without the aid of AI.
This type of AI support will change the way products are designed by enabling a more flexible design process that supports rapid experimentation and adaptability without compromising on robustness and reliability of the finished part and without the need for greater time and computational resources.
AI supports sustainability
While AI has a clear impact on the speed and adaptability of the product design process, Boris goes on to explain how it can play an equally important role in developing and producing products sustainably. To reach long term sustainability goals Boris says "...we should be simulating as much as we can because ultimately in 10 to 15 years from now, we all should be producing whatever gets produced today for mankind with say, 10 or 20% of the resource input that we are using today." And artificial intelligence will become an important tool in making that a reality.
Achieving such a lofty goal will only be possible through extensive optimization of anything and everything that can be optimized. One of the key areas AI will help in is in prototyping. By leveraging the same type of AI reduced order models used to offer accelerated decision support, nearly all physical prototyping could be moved to the virtual world, with AI models offering true to life results in seconds based on historical data and physical laws.
At this early stage in the prototyping process, digitalization not only allows the material cost of product design to nearly or completely eliminated, it also allows for far more designs to be examined, further supporting the concept of optimization. With the ability to examine tens of thousands or even millions of designs, it's far more likely that an ideal result will be achieved. At the same time, leveraging a full digitalized manufacturing process and the abilities of powerful AI support systems, it's possible to better optimize designs supply chain and manufacturing abilities as well.
AI has the potential to redefine the design process in much the same way computer simulations once did with the first steps on that journey already taking place today. Intelligently leveraging AI across the product design and manufacturing process will be vital in achieving both requirements of new products and sustainability goals. While the applications of AI in design today are still in their infancy, its potential cannot be understated and with the rapid pace of innovation AI is experiencing, it won't be long before it becomes as ubiquitous in product design as simulation is today.