Adient Builds Seats Of Tomorrow

Global automotove seat maker Adient builds seats of tomorrow. From its automotive seating prototype and testing facility in Pune, it develops products for global programmes.

- Ashish Bhatia

Automotive seating takes a new dimension at the Pune Tech Centre of Adient, the largest global automotive seating supplier, and a front runner in building the ‘seats for tomorrow’. The 850 engineers at the center work in sync with the 150 engineers outside India to support Adient’s global programme launches.

Offering full seating solutions for the passenger and commercial vehicles, Adient so far had 25 plus global programmes led from India. Of these, 12 were for clients like Mercedes, Ford, Volvo, Mitsubishi, Lexus, Nissan and Honda.

In India, Adient has 9 assembly plants, and over 11 customers. With 1500 employees, the largest seating tech centre in India established in 2000, has so far designed and launched 60 programmes locally. With access to Adient’s global technology reserves and experience, Adient India Pvt. Ltd., has come to partner a diverse customer base that spans from Maruti Suzuki in Delhi to Tata Motors (Commercial Vehicles) in Rudrapur besides Tata Motors (Passenger Vehicles) in Gujarat, to Toyota and BMW in Dharwad.

Formerly Tata Johnson Controls (TJC) in India, was the collaboration between Johnson Controls and Tata Automotive Components in 1995 that marked Adient’s entry in India. Not surprisingly, sales volumes (40% of overall sales) at Adient continue to be dominated by Tata Motors. In May 2013, Johnson Controls, a global leader in automotive seat systems and components, acquired (100%) ownership of TJC.

With a 30% market share in India, Adient has grown at 9% year-on-year, and is pegged to grow higher than the industry average of 11%, Detlef Juerss, Vice-President, Engineering and Chief Technical Officer, Adient, told Auto Components India.

New facility