Ford is rehiring experienced engineers—some former employees and others from suppliers—after artificial intelligence and automated systems failed to deliver the desired quality level. According to Bloomberg, COO Kumar Galhotra told journalists that Ford had been "relying more and more on automated quality systems" with disappointing results, prompting the company to "bring back technical specialists" who "hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor."
Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, acknowledged that the company "mistakenly thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product." Ford is not abandoning its AI plans entirely; instead, the rehired engineers—referred to as "gray beard" engineers—are training younger staff and reprogramming AI tools.
The rehiring push is expected to contribute to $1 billion in reduced costs this year. Ford also claimed the top spot among mainstream brands in the JD Power Initial Quality Survey released the same week.