Ford automated quality and AI systems claimed they could deliver a high-quality product simply by ingesting design requirements. In practice, the systems failed so badly that Ford hired back 350 veteran ‘gray beard’ engineers — some of whom had been laid off to make room for AI.
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Expert: Kumar Galhotra, Chief Operating Officer, Ford Motor Company Ford executives admitted that AI and automated quality systems failed to deliver the quality they promised. COO Kumar Galhotra said the company had been ‘relying more and more on automated quality systems’ with disappointing results, so it ‘brought back technical specialists’ who ‘hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.’ VP of Vehicle Hardware Engineering Charles Poon conceded: ‘Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product.’ CEO Jim Farley credited the rehired engineers with ‘hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars’ of tailwind on warranty and recall costs. Ford subsequently topped the J.D. Power 2026 Initial Quality Survey. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/28/ford-rehires-gray-beard-engineers-after-ai-falls-short/
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