New-generation artificial intelligence boosts product forward design capability in manufacturing industry

Abstract

Product forward design is generally posited as an essential pathway for surmounting bottlenecks in technological innovation and augmenting the core capabilities of the manufacturing industry. Bolstered by knowledge engineering, new-generation intelligent products are distinguished by the salient attributes of self-sensing, self-adaptation, self-learning, and self-decision-making. These advancements are propelling mechanical design to evolve from a traditional paradigm rooted in single-discipline expertise, empirical heuristics, and function-satisfaction orientation, toward a sophisticated framework that features multidisciplinary coupling, collaborative architecture-knowledge driving, and integrated lifecycle-wide optimization—from which defining characteristics including innovativeness, customizability, intelligence, virtuality, sustainability, optimality, and human-machine collaboration distinctly emerge. This perspective hereby explores the conceptual essence of product forward design, elaborates on the enabling role of frontier artificial intelligence technologies thereof, and underscores their typical application scenarios in high-end equipment, where these intelligent capabilities substantively drive breakthroughs in performance and adaptive functionality.