Ford is rehiring former employees, says it relied too much on automation, AI

Ford is reportedly rehiring former employees as part of its effort to improve product quality after its artificial intelligence and automated quality systems reportedly did not meet expectations. 

According to a report in Bloomberg, over the past three years, the US carmaker has brought back around 350 veteran engineers, including former staff and experts from supplier companies, to enhance quality and reduce costs.

Ford executives acknowledged that the company had relied too much on automation, neglecting the value of engineering experience gained over decades. Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s chief operating officer, said the company had depended increasingly on automated quality systems, which produced disappointing outcomes. He added that bringing back technical specialists helps identify failure points before parts reach the plant floor.

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Charles Poon, Ford’s vice-president of vehicle hardware engineering, told Bloomberg that the company overestimated AI’s capabilities. While AI is a useful tool, its effectiveness depends on the quality of data used to train it. Ford had not preserved the knowledge of its experienced engineers before many left, which limited the AI systems’ ability to detect issues early in development.

To address this, Ford rehired more than 350 veteran engineers, known internally as "gray beard" engineers, it said. These specialists mentor younger employees, assist in retraining AI tools, and identify quality problems before they reach production.

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Galhotra said these veteran engineers are central to Ford’s turnaround strategy. They lead mandatory quality reviews and help shift the focus from fixing problems after they occur to preventing them beforehand. "We’re moving from that find-and-fix mentality to preventing issues before they occur," he said to the news site.

Ford’s improvements extend beyond hardware to software, manufacturing, and supply-chain teams, which now collaborate more closely to catch issues earlier. The company has also created a 40-member software quality assurance team to enhance software reliability before vehicles reach customers.

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Ford is not abandoning AI but aims to improve its effectiveness by using better data from experienced engineers. The company has added over 100,000 AI-powered validation tests to identify edge cases and stress-test vehicle software under various conditions.