In this paper, the warm forging process sequence has been determined to manufacture the warm forged product for the precision bevel gear used as the differential gear unit of a commercial automobile. The preform shape of bevel gear influences the dimensional accuracy and stiffness of final product. The aspect ratio and chamfer length are considered as design parameters to achieve adequate metal distribution in the finish forging operation. Then the optimal conditions of design parameters have been selected by artificial neural network (ANN). Finally, to verify the optimal preform shape, the experiments of the warm forging of the bevel gear have been executed. The proposed method can give more systematic and economically feasible means for designing the preform shape in metal forming process.