Ford's global seat

Ford has developed a global front-seat structure, which can be used in almost every vehicle it makes. The single structure could save millions for the company through economies of scale, and removing the need for separate engineering, tooling and testing of multiple seats. A single all-purpose seat will also make vehicle assembly easier. The seat is a modular frame that holds the occupant in place and meets all safety regulations. Its skeleton of the seat has holes and hard points to build it up with airbags, wiring, sensors, air blowers and other components. The result ranges from a two-way adjustable seat for small cars to the 30-way adjustable seat with 11 motors in the Lincoln Continental. The structure is 17 per cent lighter and eliminates more than 50 components. Dan Ferretti, senior technical leader for Ford global seats, describes it is “one of the lightest seats in the world”. The marque first decided to stop relying on outside suppliers to engineer seat structures in 2004. Today, there are more than 150 engineers designing the global seat architecture at Ford’s Dearborn base as well as staff at engineering centres around the world. Jonathan Line, a Ford engineer who is now the global advanced seats innovation supervisor and technical expert, says: “To go from no real expertise to industry leaders is quite incredible.” The seat structure is currently in 90 per cent of vehicles sold in the US with the second-generation version being designed to meet all global requirements. It will be in four million vehicles globally by 2016 and in about 95 per cent of the line-up, according to Ferretti.