General AI Is Failing in Manufacturing. Here's Why.
- Rick Heilshorn
- Jul 13
- 2 min read
Ford just rehired 350 veteran engineers after its AI-driven quality systems failed to deliver. COO Kumar Galhotra said plainly: "We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems with disappointing results."
This is not an isolated story. We're hearing it everywhere. Here's why it keeps happening — and what manufacturers need to understand before they make the same mistake.
Problem 1: Variability
General AI doesn't produce consistent outputs. Ask the same tool to grade the same 8D twice and you'll get two different assessments. In quality engineering, variability in the evaluation is as dangerous as variability in the part. You can't build a quality system on a foundation that shifts.
Problem 2: Sycophancy
Copilot and ChatGPT are designed to be agreeable. Feed them a weak root cause analysis and they'll polish it. Push back on their assessment and they'll reconsider. Four prompts in, they've reversed their original position entirely. In quality, you need a system that enforces the standard — not one that validates whatever the engineer already believes.
Problem 3: Nobody Checks the Output
When AI produces confident-sounding results, humans stop scrutinizing them. Real errors — missing containment, incorrect root cause, failure modes that don't align with the PFMEA — pass through because the output looks authoritative.
Problem 4: IT-Led Implementations
When IT brings in Copilot as the "AI initiative," they're deploying a tool built for email and document summarization into a workflow that requires AIAG standards enforcement, PFMEA crosswalks, and failure mode logic. The tool was never designed for this. The results reflect that.
The Right Fix
Ford's fix was to bring back the gray beards. That's the right instinct — but it's a workaround, not a solution. The solution is AI designed for manufacturing quality from the ground up: trained on AIAG, IATF, ISO, built to enforce the standard, consistent on every run.
That's what we built MAD-Ai to be.
Are you seeing general AI fail in your quality operation? We should talk → www.mad-ai.com/book-a-demo
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