Adient announces new Sculpted Soft Trim breakthrough product

PLYMOUTH, Mich., Feb. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Adient (NYSE: ADNT), a global leader in automotive seating, today announced its latest breakthrough innovation, Sculpted Soft Trim. This unique product offers fresh aesthetics and new design opportunities for vehicle seats.

Sculpted Soft Trim is a soft, breathable, formed trim solution that can be used to create large trim panels or smaller, simpler parts like rear seat child seat anchor trim covers, armrests, headrests or other intricate parts. It utilizes an automated process to form these parts, reducing the amount of sewing required compared to today's trim covers.

Sculpted Soft Trim offers advantages in areas of complex sewing and concave surfaces, reducing trim patterns and sewing labor while improving challenging craftsmanship executions. Details can be added to seat trim through that were previously not achievable with traditional seat trim methods, offering new levels of design freedom. For example, with standard cut and sew, child seat anchor locations in the rear seats are an area where craftsmanship can be a challenge. Now, one Sculpted Soft Trim pattern can replace what historically took up to twelve individual patterns and sew lines to create – with a much higher level of craftsmanship. Additionally, Sculpted Soft Trim allows for firmness to be varied for the best look and feel for the application.

Among the many benefits and uses of Sculpted Soft Trim:

• Enables easy execution across a wide range of fabric and vinyl materials
• Complex 3-dimensional shape and concavity is achievable, without washing out grain detail
• Detailed parts such as belts or child seat anchor pockets can be replaced with the trim to reduce sew labor and improve craftsmanship, with consistent results
• Embossed/debossed textural patterns can be added easily in the same tool and process and, additionally, graphics and badging can be easily created for customization or to differentiate between brands
• Dissimilar materials can be pre-sewn and formed, offering a wide variety of trim options

"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."

Adient's Sculpted Soft Trim is currently available globally and will be in production on seats in multiple OEMs' vehicles this year.

About Adient:

Adient (NYSE: ADNT) is a global leader in automotive seating. With more than 65,000 employees in 29 countries, Adient operates ~200 manufacturing/assembly plants worldwide. We produce and deliver automotive seating for all major OEMs. From complete seating systems to individual components, our expertise spans every step of the automotive seat-making process. We take our products from research and design to engineering and manufacturing — and into millions of vehicles every year. For more information, please visit www.adient.com.

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SOURCE Adient