- Ford has hired 350 Technical Experts over the last three years.
- It’s after the company lost over $1 billion due to defects and subpar quality.
- Now Ford ranks #1 mass-market brand in the JD Power Initial Quality Study.
Ford is celebrating its jump up the JD Power Initial Quality Study rankings. In 2023, the brand ranked 23rd. In 2026, it leads the mass-market brand segment. And, according to Ford, it’s because they decided to put the experts back where they were needed.
The J.D. Power Initial Quality Study (IQS) measures early-stage vehicle reliability by evaluating owner-reported issues and dealership repair data during the first 90 days of ownership. Results are aggregated into a “Problems Per 100 Vehicles” (PP100) score, where a lower number indicates fewer defects or design flaws and a higher ranking.
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Ford attributes the improvements to its newly hired technical specialists, known internally as “Grey Beards.” The company has looked for the best talent, hiring from other automakers and suppliers, as well as promoting from within. Now there are around 350 technical specialists, each in their own field, to identify problems before they arise.
Speaking to Automotive News, Ford representatives are surprisingly candid about the problems. “There was a recognition as we were struggling through our quality performance several years ago that something needed to change,” said Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering. “We were not effectively solving problems, and we were not effectively preventing problems.”
A Legacy From Layoffs
The concept of technical specialists isn’t a new one. The recent dearth in expertise can be attributed to a 2019 decision to restructure the company headed by then-CEO Jim Hackett, which saw 7,000 jobs cut, but was sold as a way to make the company more agile, less bureaucratic, and to flatten the management structure.
See Also: Ford Fired Two-Thirds Of The Bosses Who Said Its Trucks Were Good Enough
Then the problems started. Even with today’s improved JD Power IQS ranking, Ford leads the way in the number of recalls. In 2023, the issues spiked with the redesigned Super Duty. The company lost a staggering $1 billion as hundreds of quality defects forced the company to slow production and even hold finished inventory so that they could undergo manual inspection.
Experience Complements AI
Ford, like most other companies, has embraced the use of artificial intelligence in working with large data sets. But the company has found human expertise is still required. While AI is used to process data and assess how systems will work, the Blue Oval’s technical experts are still needed to catch problems.
One such expert, Samuel Matt, caught a major problem before the launch of a new option on the Explorer. Matt and his team discovered that a part of the manual tailgate closure wasn’t working but they managed to catch it early on during testing. It’s just one of many examples of how Ford’s policy has changed from “find and fix” towards catching issues before they make it into production.
Other improvements Ford made behind the scenes include daily problem-solving meetings and testing vehicles for longer, now to the equivalent of 15 years or 225,000 miles.
