Smart socio-technical (Product) Systems of the future will differ significantly from the mechatronic technical systems of the 90ies of the last century and the early 2000th and are also a major technology push forward to the first generation cyber-physical product service systems of the last decade. The fast-growing demands of data linkages based on edge computing, 5G connectivity, Artificial Intelligence, and the corresponding data analytic services just form one new engineering capability dimension. The second dimension deals with the new capabilities of digital model representations for technical systems related to both, functional behavior and operational execution as well as the physical and cognitive interaction with humans. This interplay requires new (digital) Engineering capabilities based on a new “engineering intelligence core”.
This paper and presentation contribution analyses such a dilemma and explains how the future will look like with new types of “engineering intelligence”, which are currently under research and first demonstration pilots. This new upcoming competition of the latest engineering intelligence and excellence of the future is not yet widely known. It tends to be pushed out in traditional industries – the risks and drawbacks associated with such delays are evident, and the competitiveness of future industrial systems highly depends on robust and consistent progress build upon close cooperation between research/science and industry.