Ford has rehired 350 veteran engineers — some former employees, others recruited from suppliers — after automated and artificial intelligence-based quality systems failed to deliver expected results, according to Bloomberg.
Why the change and how Ford responded
Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s chief operating officer, told reporters the company had been "relying more and more on automated quality systems" with disappointing outcomes. As a result, Ford "brought back technical specialists" who now focus on finding failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.
Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, said: "Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product."
Role of the rehired specialists
Ford is not abandoning AI. Instead, the rehired engineers — described internally as "gray beard" specialists — are being used to:
- train younger staff;
- reprogram and fine-tune AI tools;
- manually hunt for potential failure points earlier in the process, prior to parts reaching production lines.
Results and business impact
Ford says the approach is delivering improvements. CEO Jim Farley stated that actions have reduced warranty and recall costs, "contributing to literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of a tailwind for Ford on cost." The company also claimed the top position among mainstream brands in the JD Power Initial Quality Survey published this week.
Conclusion
Ford’s shift illustrates that in manufacturing quality assurance, rapid adoption of automation and AI may still require experienced human expertise. Combining seasoned engineers with AI tools has, according to the company, produced measurable cost benefits and improved initial quality rankings.
