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Ford Designs New Family of Seats In-House to Ensure Comfort and Quality

DETROIT, April 14 -- Months before the first seat was built andinstalled in the new FordFlex crossover, a team of engineers working with sophisticated computershad designed and virtually perfected the seat from the comfort of theirdesks.

A trio of Ford engineers -- Qin Pan, Joanna Rakowska and Michael Medoro-- used sophisticated computer simulation technology to ensure that driversand passengers of new-generation vehicles like the upcoming 2009 Ford Flexfeel a minimum of vibration and just the right amount of road input.

The three Ford engineers will issue a technical paper this week at the2008 SAE World Congress in Detroit that details the lengths Ford went tooptimize the comfort and quality of the new Ford F-Family seats debuting inthe Flex.

"We took real-world road surface data and programmed it into ourengineering model," said Pan, the project leader. "This allowed us tooptimize the design of mass dampers in the seats to counter these predictedroad inputs earlier in the development than ever before, so that when weget to physical prototype stage, we can concentrate on fine-tuning ratherthan designing the damping system."

The breakthroughs mean Ford can apply its learnings across a wide rangeof products. The new F-Family seat architecture debuts in the Ford Flex butwill eventually be featured across a range of vehicles from the Ford Focusto the new Ford F-150.

"We set up a comfort DNA range that spans from small cars through ourtrucks," Brown said. "For instance, Mustang buyers tend to want a littlemore road input in their seats, but other buyers tend to want moreisolation, and that"s been our target for the Ford Flex to reflect thequiet, refinement and luxury of its interior. The character of the seat isthe same; just the intensity of the character is different."

For its new F-Family front seat design, Ford bucked the trend ofoutsourcing seat design and instead created a dedicated Ford seatengineering team within the company"s Body Engineering division.

This move has delivered major quality, comfort and economy-of-scalebenefits, reflecting the fact that seats are the second most expensivesystem in a vehicle behind powertrains.

"As we"ve brought this engineering back in house, we"ve brought a teamover from vehicle engineering and put them inside the seat organization tofocus on enhancing comfort," said Jerry Brown, chief engineer for the newF-Family seats. "We tune the seats to the character of the vehicle basedon an established comfort DNA."