Ford rehires ‘gray beard’ engineers after AI falls short
Quick Answer
Ford has decided to rehire experienced engineers, referred to as 'gray beards', after its AI initiatives failed to meet expectations in quality production.
Quick Take
Ford has decided to rehire experienced engineers, referred to as 'gray beards', after its AI initiatives failed to meet expectations in quality production. The company acknowledged that simply implementing AI was insufficient for achieving high-quality outcomes in their vehicle models.
Key Points
- Ford's AI efforts did not yield the expected quality improvements in vehicle production.
- The company is bringing back seasoned engineers to enhance product quality.
- The term 'gray beard' refers to experienced engineers with extensive industry knowledge.
- Ford's reliance on AI alone proved inadequate for their production goals.
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Ford executives said they have hired 350 veteran engineers — some of them were former employees, while others had been working at suppliers — after artificial intelligence and automated systems failed to deliver the desired quality level.
Bloomberg reports the company’s chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra told journalists that Ford had been “relying more and more on automated quality systems” with disappointing results. So the company “brought back technical specialists,” and those specialists “hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.”
Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, added, “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.”
To be clear, this doesn’t mean Ford is abandoning its AI plans entirely. Instead, it’s using the rehired employees — referred to as “gray beard” engineers — to train younger staff and reprogram AI tools.
This rehiring seems to be paying off, with Ford anticipating that it will lead to $1 billion in reduced costs this year. The automaker also claimed the top spot among mainstream brands in the JD Power Initial Quality Survey released this week.
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