Special report: Product design gets an AI makeover

It seems like every industry is exploring ways to employ AI within their business. They view AI as a technology that enables more efficient processes and that allows them to innovate in ways that seemed impossible in the past.

Siemens was very curious to explore how AI is being applied in the product development space. So, we sponsored a study with MIT Technology Review and they created a report that was published in Insights. The report states that AI is being applied to product development in these ways:

• To simplify complex systems. The report details the use case at Renault where they simplified the development of automated manual transmission systems. By using Simcenter Amesim from Siemens, which uses AI learning processes, they could quickly model and simulate their designs. This allowed them to cut their development time in half.
• To detect problems quickly. Here, companies are collecting data from machines running on the factory floor. They run that data through AI models to predict when a machine might fail or when it might need routine maintenance.
• To add precision in processes. The report covered how Siemens Sinumerik Edge platform, using mathematical optimization, optimized a machine system that moves hundreds of tools in a sequence to perform an assembly job on the factory floor.

Here is a great quote from the report that sums up the power of AI for product development:

“With AI, it’s possible to explore many more design variances than with linear engineering, where engineers have to test each different use case and explore the results of each one.”
– Bernd Zapf, Head of Development, New Business, and Technologies, Heller Group

To learn more, check out the report here.