While you consider it lame, you have to figure it could be any number of issues, from a part coming from a 3rd party supplier failing after "X" amount of time or hours used. It could have been a faulty sub assembly from that suppliers, supplier, or further down that food chain. A simple .0003 of a gram of solder on a microchip, which is now failing because of vibration or heat degradation. Perhaps all of the parts and assemblies are correct, but a person on the line was mis-trained, or his/her installation equipment was out of spec. Perhaps a forklift driver let his/her pallet down too fast, thus jarring the parts in such a way as to cause issues days, weeks, months down the road. Perhaps a tractor trailer driver hit a large pothole while taking a batch of parts from another manufacturer, or perhaps this is just something that was never considered when the truck was being designed (not likely, but still possible). There are 100's, if not 1,000's of other things that can be at fault. Finding them is not the trick, and Ford, I am certain, is throwing a millions in liquid funds to try and find and fix the issue so that it does not occur down the road ever again.
Just my two cents worth on the subject.
Bill