Re-engineering Engineering: Transforming a Digitally Enabled Craft Industry with AI/ML

The annual financial statements of firms offering hyperscale solutions for process automation, digitisation and AI highlight that the strongest markets for these services are retail, banking, media, government and logistics. The traditional engineering sector is a laggard in this space. Whilst it is true that engineering is digitally enabled, evidenced by a billion dollar marketplace for CAE, CAD, CAM and BIM tools, the deployment and use of engineering software still resembles a craft industry. The tools reside in silos, segmented by physics, engineering know-how and intellectual property. Furthermore, the tool outputs are scattered across the supply chain, isolated in a myriad of different systems for record keeping. In this talk, we will discuss how the adoption of the industrial metaverse can loosen up the flow of data between organisations. Using the design of a fusion power plant as a case study, we will show how improved data flow facilitates better collaboration and enables machine learning, resulting in the acceleration of design space exploration. In our digital twin platform, the automated capture of metadata, recording who did what, when, why and how, opens the door to the adoption of AI in engineering. Our work demonstrates that it is possible for engineering to adopt industry solutions for automation whose original development was motivated and driven by e-commerce. The ultimate goal, which we believe is achievable now, is to re-engineer engineering, enabling humans and machines to collaborate in delivering grand challenge engineering projects.