Ford has rehired experienced human engineers to help address the shortcomings of artificial intelligence (AI) tools meant to tackle quality issues in the automaker’s production processes.
The hiring push helped Ford top the JD Power 2026 US Initial Quality Study (IQS) for the first time since 2010 amid improvements in the quality of its new vehicles, and follows some hard-learned lessons about the ability of AI to replace human knowledge in production processes.
“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it,” Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, said on a press call Wednesday, according to a report by Bloomberg.
“Over prior years, we didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles,” he said.
“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high quality product,” Poon said.
He also noted that the AI tools lacked the training and expertise that veteran technicians have, and many of the company’s veteran technicians left Ford before their knowledge could be used to improve the performance of the AI tools.
“We recognized 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,” Poon said.
The Detroit giant said that it has hired about 300 veteran engineers to work in its vehicle engineering division in the last few years.
“Free from daily production schedules, these engineers now act as internal auditors, running mandatory weekly design reviews to hunt for and eliminate potential failure points before blueprints ever reach the factory floor,” Ford said in a release.
Ford Chief Operating Officer Kumar Galhotra said that the experienced engineers and technical specialists were “at the heart” of the company’s efforts to improve production quality by addressing process issues before they’re incorporated into workflows.
Ford CEO Jim Farley told Bloomberg TV that the shift is helping improve the company’s financial performance, with spending on warranty coverage and recalls coming down, which in turn is boosting the automaker through cost reductions.
JD Power’s 2026 IQS not only placed Ford at the top of the list for the first time in 16 years, but it also ranked the Ford F-150, Ford Mustang and Ford Super Duty at the top of their respective segments for the second straight year.
Additionally, the Ford Escape, Ford Explorer, Ford Expedition and Ford Maverick also ranked among the top three in their segments – which meant that seven of the company’s top 10 models ranked in the top three of their categories.
FOX Business reached out to Ford for comment.
