When your competitor nearly bankrupts itself, why would you make the same mistake?
That’s what Ford just did. They should have learned from GM.
In the 1980s, GM poured $45 billion into factory automation in an effort to catch up with Toyota. Then CEO Roger Smith said “Automation came along just in time to save us”.
It didn’t. GM’s market share collapsed. Meanwhile the automated factories ran at 50% capacity.
Ford just rehired 350 experienced engineers after failing to replace them with AI.
The press is painting this as a story about AI failing, as a technology. It’s not.
This is a story about adopting a technology without first identifying its hidden failure modes.
VP of Vehicle Hardware Engineering, Charles Poon, admitted it:
“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and adjusting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product.”
A GM factory automation engineer who lived through it said it simply:
“…all you can do is automate confusion.”
Ford amplified weak inputs with AI. GM automated confusion. These are the same multi-billion dollar mistakes.
As AI proliferates in your organization, so are the weak inputs, the confusion, as well as a variety of other problems setting you up for expensive mistakes. Find them before they find you.