Current State, Potentials and Challenges for the Use of Artificial Intelligence in the early Phase of Product Development: A Survey

The boom in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies is opening up new opportunities in engineering. A variety of novel tools are flooding the market every day. However, integration into the industry processes is happening at a slow pace. This paper represents a survey conducted with 163 industrial engineers on the use of AI in product development. The questionnaire specifically focuses on the early phase of product development and investigates the current state, challenges and potentials. The results show a high level of interest in the use of AI, but integration into everyday working processes has been low so far. Among the few who incorporate AI into their concept development processes, an indication to shorter concept development times was observed. The automation of routine tasks and a conflicting requirements detection are seen as particularly promising AI applications. Main challenges and barriers lie in the expertise of employees, the costs of implementation and the usability of data. Nevertheless, more than two thirds state that further AI integration is planned. The focus here is particularly on generative AI.