Ford has hired back more than 300 veteran quality inspectors after finding that artificial intelligence tools deployed across its manufacturing plants failed to match the skills and experience of human workers, according to a recent report by Bloomberg.
The US carmaker had introduced AI across parts of its operations, including 900 AI-powered cameras designed to spot defects and supply disruptions. However, Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told reporters that the company had mistakenly assumed the technology alone would deliver high-quality results.
“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it,” Poon said, as per the report. “Over prior years, we didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers who have been with us through many product cycles.”
Poon said the automated systems lacked the judgement that only experienced technicians develop over decades. The returning engineers, many of whom had previously left the company, have been tasked with retraining Ford’s AI tools and mentoring younger staff. “We recognised that for us to enhance some of our automation and machine learning and artificial intelligence tools, we needed to ensure that they were trained by the most experienced individuals,” he added.
The admission came as Ford celebrated climbing back to the top of the JD Power Initial Quality Study for mainstream brands, a ranking it last held in 2010. A company press release said achieving the result had required “a significant talent refresh,” including replacing senior leaders and bringing back roughly 300 engineers “who carry the hard-earned wisdom of decades of design.” Ford still expects more than $1 billion in warranty and material costs this year, though it believes those expenses will decline as quality measures take hold.
