Ford has rehired more than 300 veteran quality inspectors in recent years after its artificial intelligence systems failed to match the skills and experience of human engineers.
In an effort to cut costs and boost productivity, the US carmaker adopted AI across parts of its operations, including for quality checks.
However, executives said the firm has brought back experienced personnel to address the shortcomings of the automated systems.
“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it,” Charles Poon, vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told reporters.
“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,” he said.
The automaker is among many companies that have embraced AI amid high expectations about its potential to improve efficiency and margins.
“AI will leave a lot of white collar people behind,” Ford boss Jim Farley said in an interview last June.
In an October earnings call, chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra said the firm was “deploying AI across the entire industrial system,” including 900 AI-powered cameras in its plants to detect quality issues.
But Poon said the AI-driven checks had not lived up to expectations.
“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product,” he said.
He pointed out that automated tools lacked the training and expertise of veteran technicians, many of whom had left the company before their knowledge could be captured.
These human workers have since been reintroduced to train the AI systems and mentor younger employees.
“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 said.
Ford’s admission came as it celebrated topping the US JD Power Initial Quality Study for mainstream automakers — a ranking it had not held since 2010.
The company said reaching best-in-class quality required a significant talent refresh, including rehiring roughly 300 veteran engineers “who carry the hard-earned wisdom of decades of design.”
