Ford Develops Sensor-Based Quality System
Ford has received a U.S. patent on a vision-based quality system. Photo courtesy Ford Motor Co.
DEARBORN, MI—Several decades ago, Ford Motor Co. made big strides in quality. In fact, back in the 1980s, it spent millions on an ad campaign entitled “Quality is Job 1”.
But, in recent years, the automaker has been plagued by a variety of problems resulting in numerous recalls and massive warranty claims. Among other things, that lapse in quality has been reflected in poor results in J.D. Power’s annual quality study.
To address some of the issues, Ford engineers are harnessing artificial intelligence and vision systems technology. According to a recent U.S. patent (US 2025/0242829 A1), they have developed an exterior quality evaluation system that uses state-of-the-art sensor technology.
While the system may never be implemented at any Ford assembly plants, it indicates some of the challenges that engineers are attempting to address.
The “Systems and Methods of Evaluating an Exterior Quality of a Vehicle” is described in the patent as “A method for obtaining a first set of images of an exterior of one or more vehicles, determining a condition of the exterior of the one or more vehicles by an automated vehicle marshaling algorithm of an infrastructure system, and causing the one or more vehicles to navigate toward a waypoint and capture one or more characteristics associated with the one or more vehicles.
“During vehicle development and usage, inefficiencies associated with the identification of vehicle exterior quality issues at multiple points may exist. For example, manual inspection of a vehicle in a manufacturing plant may potentially lead to inadvertently missing an exterior quality check and/or not inspecting the exterior of the vehicle as often as may be desirable.”
The system would obtain “by one or more sensors of an infrastructure system, a first set of images of an exterior of one or more vehicles; determining, by an automated vehicle marshaling algorithm of the infrastructure system, a condition of the exterior of the one or more vehicles, wherein the determination of the condition of the exterior of the one or more vehicles is based on the first set of images; and causing, based on the condition of the exterior of the one or more vehicles not satisfying a quality check, the one or more vehicles to navigate toward a waypoint and capture one or more characteristics associated with the one or more vehicles; further comprising: determining whether the condition satisfies the quality check; wherein the condition of the one or more vehicles comprises a condition of a vehicle paint, one or more vehicle dents, a vehicle exterior part misalignment, an incorrect trim package associated with the one or more vehicles, or a combination thereof….”
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