Abstract
n the previous chapters, we learned all about Axiomatic Design (AD), where AD comes from, how it was developed, the axioms, complexity theory, and in-depth content for learning AD. This chapter looks at how AD will evolve in the future and introduces an approach based on Artificial Intelligence (AI). The approach presented is to be understood as a hypothesis to venture into the future together with the students analyzing how AI will change not only their daily lives, but also the work of a design engineer.
Many of the technological innovations related to Industry 4.0 pave the way for achieving a next level in engineering and especially in manufacturing. For the next decisive steps, we need the combination of disciplines such as engineering design and AI to create assistance systems for designers of highly complex systems, which support them step by step in the design process as well as for the re-design of systems affected by time-dependent complexity.
In the proposed AI-assisted design approach, we propose to combine AD as an established and proven theory for the design of complex systems with the latest methods of AI. For the design phase, AI offers an enormous potential to transform customer needs into functional requirements (FRs) and to support the designer in identifying and selecting the best design solution for a design problem based on existing data sets of previous successful or not successful designs.
Similarly, the combination of modern technologies for data collection and AI also holds great potential to monitor complex systems determined by time-dependent complexity, like manufacturing systems. Based on improved technologies for data collection and processing as well as AI we can generate data-based predictive suggestions for system adaptation or even optimization, either with or without the interaction of the designer.
The presented AI-assisted design approach has potential to usher in the next era of engineering design, which will take us a huge step toward the vision of intelligent and self-optimizing systems.