The fourth annual Avnet Insights survey has revealed that engineers are looking at the opportunity for artificial intelligence in product development with cautious optimism as many are still assessing in which areas of their work AI will have the greatest impact.
As engineers begin to feel more optimistic overall – three-quarters said they think market conditions for their design products are getting better and half anticipate that economic and market conditions in the next year will make their product design and development work easier – Avnet’s latest survey turned to AI, a key technology that will undoubtedly have a significant impact on engineering design in the year to come.
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Avnet found that 42 per cent of engineers have incorporated AI into their product design process and are currently shipping those products. It asked engineers where emerging AI technology may have the biggest impact among 14 areas, from AI-driven simulation and testing to hardware design tools and software code generation. Respondents could not identify a single leading area of opportunity – indicating that, in fact, the opportunity may lay across the board.
‘It is nearly impossible to outline one specific opportunity for a technology having as much potential impact as artificial intelligence,’ said Alex Iuorio, senior vice president, global supplier development at Avnet. ‘In our latest survey, engineers told us that they see AI impacting everything from their efficiency to hardware design tools to code generation, and even how they collaborate. It’s not that AI will not impact any one area most but rather the opposite: AI can, and will, have significant impact in all these areas.’
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Looking specifically at product development, nearly all (96 per cent) engineers agreed that AI will be somewhat to extremely likely to have an impact on key product development functions, including increasing automation of design tasks, enabling more personalised and customised designs, improving predictive capabilities for market needs and reducing the overall time for product development cycles.
Avnet found that the top challenges engineers expect when considering integrating AI into their products include security and privacy concerns (37 per cent) and data quality issues (31 per cent). For about a quarter, integration with existing tools and high costs are also top-of-mind.
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‘Any new frontier is going to come with new challenges,’ said Iuorio. ‘We’re seeing engineers raise concerns about AI in product development, which aligns with concerns we are seeing about AI more broadly.’
Engineers also expect that certain skills will help them capitalise on the immediate opportunity, Avnet found. The top skills engineers feel are most necessary to use AI effectively in product design include data analysis and interpretation (16 per cent), AI model optimisation (16 per cent) and problem-solving and critical thinking (16 per cent).
The 2024 Avnet Insights survey was conducted online and fielded to 1,204 global respondents, between 31 October and 15 November 2024. Respondents were based in the USA, Mexico, the UK, Germany, China and Japan.
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The full 2024 Avnet Insights survey is available here.