Ford brings back old hands to fix AI-led quality issues

Ford Motor Co. has turned to veteran engineers to tackle persistent quality issues after finding that artificial intelligence alone was not delivering the desired results, a Bloomberg report showed on Monday.

Over the past three years, the US automaker has hired around 350 experienced engineers, many of them former Ford employees and others from suppliers, to strengthen product quality and help train younger staff. The seasoned engineers have also helped retrain the company's AI systems using their decades of engineering expertise.

Those veteran engineers were "at the heart" of Ford's efforts to turn around its quality problems, Chief Operating Officer Kumar Galhotra said, adding that they now lead mandatory quality reviews and have helped retrain the company's AI tools to identify defects before they occur, as per the report.


The improvements are also translating into financial gains. Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley said declining warranty claims and recall-related costs are generating "hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars" in savings, as per the report.

Ford is targeting a $1 billion reduction in costs this year.

"Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as the information you use to train it," Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told reporters, as cited by Bloomberg. He said the company had underestimated the value of experienced engineers who had worked across multiple product cycles.

The move stands out at a time when companies across industries are increasingly looking to AI to replace knowledge-intensive work. Ford's experience suggests that human expertise remains essential in training AI systems and improving engineering outcomes.

"Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence... that would produce a high-quality product," Poon said. Instead, the company realised its AI and machine-learning tools needed to be trained using the knowledge of its most experienced engineers.

Three Ford models—the F-150 pickup, Super Duty truck and Mustang sports car—topped their respective categories in the JD Power survey, the report said.

Despite the progress, Ford continues to face quality-related challenges. It remains the most recalled automaker in the US and has projected about $1 billion in warranty and material costs this year. Galhotra, however, described recalls as a "lagging indicator" and said the company expects recall numbers to decline as newer vehicles developed under the revamped quality process enter the market, according to the report.