Ford Motor Co. executives said the company has rehired about 350 senior engineers, including former Ford employees and technicians who previously worked at suppliers. Ford admitted that its previous attempts to improve vehicle quality by relying on artificial intelligence and automated systems did not achieve the desired results.
According to Bloomberg, Ford Chief Operating Officer Kumar Galhotra said in an interview with the media that the company has "increasingly relied on automated quality systems" in the past period, but the actual results have been disappointing. As a result, Ford decided to "re-engage technical experts" who can troubleshoot potential failure points before parts enter the production line.
Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, further admitted that the company had made a misjudgment when introducing artificial intelligence. He said: "We once mistakenly believed that as long as we introduce artificial intelligence and input all existing design requirements into the system, we can automatically produce high-quality products." This statement is regarded as a public reflection on the in-depth application of AI in traditional manufacturing industries.
Still, that doesn't mean Ford will completely abandon the use of artificial intelligence in quality control and production. The company's current direction is to pair the rehired senior engineers - known internally as "greybeard engineers" - with younger engineers, with the former taking on a mentoring role while participating in the reprogramming and optimization of existing AI tools.
Ford said that this round of "human-machine integration" quality improvement has shown results. The company expects to save about $1 billion in related costs this year. In the latest J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey, Ford also took first place among mainstream auto brands, thereby proving to the outside world that its quality system is returning to robustness.
In the broader industry context, Ford's approach is seen as a real-life example of traditional car companies embracing artificial intelligence: complete reliance on algorithms and automation cannot replace the understanding and control of complex industrial systems by experienced engineers. Ford chose to let "Greybeard" and AI work in parallel, rather than simply choosing one or the other. It also provides a new example for how the manufacturing industry balances digital transformation and artificial experience.
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