At the Industrial Forum IRT 2023, the company MAHLE Electric Drives Slovenija d.o.o. and Jožef Stefan Institute received the TARAS award for successful cooperation between industry and academia. The subject of cooperation was the design of an electric motor for steering systems in vehicles. The goal was to determine its geometry and material properties such that the technical requirements are met and the cost minimized. We arrived at the solution through an innovative simulation-optimization process that includes the statistical evaluation of solutions considering deviations in the manufacture of the engine. The result is an advanced cost-effective engine that substantially improves the company's competitiveness on the market. The cooperation was initiated by the Center for Technology Transfer and Innovation in 2022, and the project was carried out by the Intelligent Systems Department (Bogdan Filipič, Tea Tušar, Aljoša Vodopija and Jordan Cork) and the Computer Systems Department (Peter Korošec).