Method and system for controlling a production plant to manufacture a product

Abstract

A machine learning module is provided which is trained to generate from a design data record specifying a design variant of a product, a first performance signal quantifying a predictive performance of the design variant and a predictive uncertainty of the predictive performance. A variety of design data records each specifying a design variant of the product is generated. For a respective design data record, the following steps are performed: a first performance signal and a corresponding predictive uncertainty are generated, depending on the predictive uncertainty, a simulation yielding a second performance signal quantifying a simulated performance of the corresponding design variant is either run or skipped, and a performance value is derived from the second performance signal if the simulation is run or, otherwise, from the first performance signal. Depending on the derived performance values, a performance-optimizing design data record is determined and output to control the production plant.