<h2>New Product Development Specialists Provide Expertise That Machine Learning Can’t Match</h2>
Engineering and manufacturing businesses have spent the last few years exploring how the new wave of AI technologies can benefit them, with a primary interest in whether these tools can create wider profit margins.
In many cases, AI offers efficiencies for workers, businesses, and end-users, such as forecasting demand, predictive maintenance, and process automation. These advances help improve your business, your personnel, and those you serve.
However, we also want to offer a word of caution about the use of AI in the product development process, specifically finite element analysis (FEA).
If you require the support of a new product development engineering team that performs FEA to understand how equipment or machinery responds under real operating conditions, a human-driven solution is essential.
<h3>Finite Element Analysis: A Critical, Human-Led Skill</h3>
FEA is a mechanical engineering method that simulates load, pressure, vibration, temperature, and fatigue to ensure a product can perform well in the physical world. An engineering team will build a digital model of the product and divide it into a “mesh” of “finite elements” to observe how these smaller structures behave when the design is subjected to certain forces. The final output is a highly detailed map of what happens to your product when force is applied.
For heavy equipment and machinery, FEA is not optional. FEA helps manufacturers protect themselves against failure, code and compliance exposure, and costly redesign. Although businesses can outsource certain tasks to AI, they shouldn’t trust this tool with the underpinning of their product’s success. For FEA and other highly technical processes, companies should consider a <a href=”https://finiteengineering.com/” title=”new product development expert”>new product development expert</a>.
<h3>Why New Product Development Specialists Matter For FEA</h3>
AI software is capable of generating an FEA stress plot on a 3-D model of your product. Yet that doesn’t mean it’s reliable. This is a consistent theme across AI tools, whether you’re creating a graphic or modeling revenue. If you are too reliant on AI, you’re likely going to get the <a href=”https://www.britannica.com/topic/Why-does-AI-art-screw-up-hands-and-fingers-2230501″ target=”_blank” title=”six finger” version”>“six finger” version</a> of FEA, not high-quality analysis that you should stake your product’s success on.
AI can support FEA work, accelerate parts of it, and help engineers move faster through ancillary tasks. But failure analysis requires an experienced product development engineer to set up, run, and interpret FEA from beginning to end.
<h4>AI Can’t Operate From First Principles</h4>
<a href=”https://finiteengineering.com/solutions/new-product-development/” title=”A new product development company”>A new product development company</a> approaches a new design, including analysis, from a first principles perspective, a concept that was born in Ancient Greece. Engineers begin from the fundamental physics, material, and mechanics that define a certain product’s design. When FEA begins, it is conducted with an understanding of this foundation. Engineers question what loads a component might see in service, what materials are best for manufacturing, and much more. Ultimately, engineers work with <em>context</em>.
<h4>AI Loves Patterns and It Aims To Please</h4>
AI works by pattern matching against the data on which it was trained. When the specifics of your product don’t match or repeat what AI has already learned, it can’t answer effectively and the results can be extremely costly. It’s also important to remember that all AI programs want to be helpful to a fault. AI sounds confident. It provides correct and incorrect answers with the same level of confidence, which creates a false sense of security as you move your project to the next phase.
Research published recently in <em>Nature</em> found that AI “systematically reward[s] guessing over admitting uncertainty.” <strong>AI programming can be an absolute liability for businesses that depend on optimized, highly effective, and safe equipment and machinery. </strong>
<h3>Choose New Product Development Engineers Who Do the Work Themselves</h3>
AI is useful in the daily work of engineers. AI software can help with research, draft language for reports, summarize complex documentation, or move through any number of mundane tasks that used to eat up time. When it’s used well, AI is a force multiplier.
But we know there’s a meaningful distinction between AI supporting engineering work and AI actually performing the engineering. A veteran product development engineer will tell you when they need to keep searching to find the right solution, design assumptions need further verification, or results seem inconsistent. You’re investing in judgment.
AI simply can’t deliver curiosity, years of experience, or even humility. Finite Engineering can. We provide FEA services and complete <a href=”https://finiteengineering.com/solutions/new-product-development/” title=”new product development specialization”>new product development specialization</a> to heavy equipment manufacturers that need success in the field, not just AI that happily tells you what you want to hear.
<a href=”https://finiteengineering.com/contact/” title=”Contact Finite Engineering today”>Contact Finite Engineering today</a> to talk with a product development engineer about your next project. Our human experts are ready to help.
