AI’s impact on physical product engineering has been transformative, driving an evolution from traditionally manual processes to AI-driven automated workflows. Enterprises are adopting AI across the product life cycle to realize productivity gains, reduce overheads, and accelerate time to market. Additionally, AI is helping enhance physical products’ functionalities through features such as voice recognition, predictive analytics, and personalized user experiences.  

Physical AI is emerging as a new interest area where physical products are getting closer to autonomously perceiving, understanding, and dynamically interacting with the world. With that, technology giants such as Meta and Amazon are foraying into robotics and autonomous systems. Furthermore, fostering expertise across areas such as AI hardware, edge computing, sensor technologies, and advanced simulation platforms is becoming essential across the wider set of industries.

In this Viewpoint, we explore strategic imperatives such as infrastructure investments, talent upskilling, and ecosystem partnerships that enterprises should adopt to thrive in such an environment. Finally, it explores providers' roles in enabling enterprises to seamlessly adopt AI as a core competency and realize substantial benefits in the current environment.

Scope

All industries and geographies

Contents

In this report, we examine:

• AI’s impact on the physical product engineering value chain
• AI-driven enhancement of product capabilities
• Physical AI’s evolution to autonomously create products
• Engineering service providers’ role to support enterprises in this evolution

Membership(s)

Engineering Research and Development

Sourcing and Vendor Management