Ford has admitted to rehiring hundreds of human workers after its aggressive AI adoption strategy backfired.
The US automaker hired over 350 veteran engineers, referred to internally as “gray beards”, over the past three years in order to address mistakes made by automated systems.
The staff will lead quality reviews after the automation issues cost the company billions of dollars, Bloomberg reported, while some workers will also help improve and train the AI systems.
“We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems and not getting the desired results,” said Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s chief operating officer.
“We brought back technical specialists and they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.”
All the US automakers are the same. They went through this in the mid 2000s too. Back then it was cutting engineering staff to save profits and outsourcing.
Until that decision showed in Part Quality and they got downgraded by JD power and other industry measures. Then management tried save it by putting together teams to rebuild skills and consumer confidence.
One big issue was interior plastic panels with visible/touchable sharp split lines with flash. Picture shitty army men miniatures.
My niece cut her calf open on a razor sharp flash edge of a dodge map pocket. That’s how bad it had gotten.
One visit I went to the GM tech center to consult on some better part options, the office had about 150 cubicals and there were like 3 people working there. Outsourcing killed a ton of legacy knowledge with the layoffs.
Side point: Do you have any idea how hard it is to get downgraded by JD power? It’s a marketing firm. You pay for the awards. A lot. Hundreds of thousands for them.
Their QA was that bad. Still is. Used to be too.