During the forging process of a certain type of automobile disc steering knuckle, there are quality problems such as high crack rate of 10.00% and high scrap rate of 7.36%. After analysis, due to the design defects of the original forging process, defects such as forging folds, cracks and insufficient filling of mold cavity are prone to occur. Therefore, it was necessary to carry out forging process optimization, including forging process analysis, drawing of forgings diagram, equipment tonnage selection, forging process step optimization, blank design and selection, hot forging mold optimization design, etc. Then, two groups of process optimization schemes were designed, scheme 1 was blanking (size of Φ150 mm×280 mm)-upsetting (upsetting amount of 20 mm)-pre-forging (material section placed horizontally in the cavity)-final forging-trimming, and scheme 2 was blanking (size of Φ150 mm×280 mm)-upsetting (upsetting amount of 50 mm)-pre-forging (material section placed vertically in the cavity)-final forging-trimming. Furthermore, combined with the finite element process simulation, the simulation quality results of the two process schemes were compared and analyzed, and the process schemes were optimized. The comparison between results of process simulation and small batch trial production verification proves that the quality of the products obtained by the two groups of process optimization schemes improves compared with the original production process. The effect of scheme 2 is better, and the scrap rate after forging is reduced from about 7.36% of the original production process to about 1.01%, which is given priority. Compared with the actual trial production results, the process simulation results are basically consistent with the actual situation, which is credible. Finally, an ideal process scheme is proposed as a research direction of mass production development and breakthrough of forging technology in the future.