Ford Motor Co. took an unusually human approach to fixing its stubborn quality problems: It brought back what it calls “gray beard” engineers to help train younger staff and to reprogram the artificial intelligence tools that weren’t getting the job done.

Over the last three years, Ford says it has hired 350 veteran engineers, many of them former employees and others from suppliers, to help address seemingly intractable quality woes that have cost the automaker billions. The result: Ford is the top mainstream brand in the latest JD Power Initial Quality Survey, released June 25.

“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, told reporters on a call June 24. “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.”

Those engineers were “at the heart” of Ford’s efforts to turn around quality problems, said Kumar Galhotra, chief operating officer. They now run mandatory meetings that rigorously troubleshoot quality problems, and they have reprogrammed AI tools to head off glitches before they happen.

“We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems,” and not getting the desired results, Galhotra said. “We brought back technical specialists” and “they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.”

And their work is flowing directly to Ford’s bottom line.

“We’re seeing our warranty coverages come down. We’re seeing our recall costs come down,” Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley said on June 25 on Bloomberg TV. “These are all contributing to literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of a tailwind for Ford on cost.”

Overall, the automaker is aiming to cut $1 billion in costs this year.

The return of the veteran engineers at Ford cuts against the prevailing wisdom — and fear — that AI will replace all kinds of knowledge workers. But Ford found the machines couldn’t replace experience.

“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,” Poon said. But “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.”

As a result of the efforts of the old hands, Ford vaulted above quality stalwarts such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. on JD Power’s bellwether survey that measures the quality of a car during the first three months of ownership. Only luxury brands Porsche and Genesis topped Ford this year.

In last year’s survey, Ford ranked 10th among mainstream brands with quality below the industry average. Its improvement in this year’s survey was the most of any like brand. 

Three of Ford’s models — the F-150 pickup, the Super Duty truck and the Mustang sports car — ranked highest in their respective categories by JD Power.

Despite the strong showing, Ford remains the most recalled automaker in America, and the company has said it is expecting $1 billion in warranty and materials costs this year. Galhotra said recalls are a “lagging indicator” of Ford’s quality, and expects to see fewer in the future.

“Because we’re doing more to prevent issues upfront, we believe these recall numbers are going to steadily come down with the newer vehicles,” Galhotra said. “I can’t give you a very specific date on when the number will turn.”