Adient launches Sculpted Soft Trim seating solution that streamlines production and expands design flexibility

Sculpted Soft Trim, Adient’s new seating technology, is a breathable, formed trim system suitable for both large panels and smaller components such as rear child-seat anchor covers, armrests and headrests. The solution uses an automated forming process that reduces the amount of sewing required compared with conventional trim covers.

Sculpted Soft Trim provides advantages in areas involving complex sewing and concave surfaces by reducing the number of trim patterns and lowering sewing labour requirements while improving execution quality. It enables design details that are difficult to achieve using traditional seat trim methods. For example, with standard cut and sew, child seat anchor locations in the rear seats are an area where craftsmanship can be a challenge. Sculpted Soft Trim can replace what historically required up to 12 individual patterns and sewing lines to create.

Sculpted Soft Trim supports a wide range of fabric and vinyl materials and enables complex three-dimensional shapes and concave surfaces without compromising grain detail. Detailed components such as belts or child-seat anchor pockets can be integrated into the trim to reduce sewing labor and improve consistency. The process also enables embossed or debossed textural patterns, graphics and badging to be incorporated within the same tooling for brand differentiation, while dissimilar materials can be pre-sewn and formed to expand design flexibility.

“Sculpted Soft Trim fundamentally changes what’s possible in seat trim design by combining premium aesthetics with meaningful manufacturing efficiency,” said Mike Maddelein, Adient’s vice president of engineering in the Americas.

“With cycle times reduced to roughly 50% of traditional forming methods, this technology delivers both speed and quality. In addition, decorative sewing, quilting and embossed or debossed features introduce another level of specialization, all executed with tight tolerance control to ensure consistent, high-end craftsmanship at scale.”