One of the earliest global automotive tier-1 suppliers to enter India, Adient (then a division of Johnson Controls), first established its operations in India in 1995 through the formation of Tata Johnson Controls in collaboration with Tata Automotive Components. The company has since expanded its Tech Centre in India, with an additional seating, prototyping and testing facility in Pune last year.
Commercial Vehicle Seating, Adient
Adient has also all the resources to perform every step of the automotive seat manufacturing process within its own organization – from market and consumer research, engineering and industrial design, prototyping and testing, to just-in-time production.
Mr. David Herberg, Executive Director, Commercial Vehicle Seating, Adient, has stressed the importance of the modular platforms and how they are adding to the success of Adient in different markets. He said: “The key factor to our success in the commercial vehicle seating business is our global approach. Our modular platform for commercial vehicle seats enables us to offer the right product range to international OEM customers and the aftermarket.”
Notably, Adient’s modular system is designed to fulfill a wide variety of market and customer requirements. For example, it is capable of meeting the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) standards which apply to all European countries as well as to OEMs in China and Brazil. It can also be configured to meet the US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), which is also employed in South Korea, for example.
The modular system offers ‘off-the-shelf’ seat models, as well as solutions that are tailored to the customer requirements that vary between world regions and differ substantially in terms of specifications, standard equipment, number of variants and comfort level. “With our network of 238 production and assembly plants in 34 countries, we can quickly set up local plant-in-plant manufacturing capacities for commercial vehicle seats close to our customers,” added Mr. Herberg.
Amongst the many seats displayed by Adient at the IAA 2018 fair in Hanover, quite noticeable was the seat made at the company’s Pune facility. Said Mr. Tilman Schaefer, Press Office Adient/RECARO CV Business: “Two years ago, we spoke about the Indian CV seat market. Two years later we are doing serious seat production for a couple of Tata Motors vehicles including the Signa. The Tata Signa high-quality seat follows IS and European safety standard and also has a climatization system. Its passive ventilation feature improves seat comfort, particularly for long-haul routes. Especially for India, the seat also has removable and washable seat covers to ease personalization and cleanliness.”
The 1516 Signa is a mechanical-suspended driver seat for light and medium commercial vehicles. The seat provides driver comfort along with uncompromising safety and aesthetics as compared to the existing static seats in the Indian market. Passive ventilation adds to convenience in long haulage. And the do-it-yourself removable cover provides options for customization and ensures cleanability. The seat improves the driver comfort with minimum impact on part price, offering strong value and supporting the total cost of ownership.
Market-specific seats
Adient also has its focus on the Chinese market and among its Chinese OEM customers is JMC Heavy Duty Vehicles Co. Ltd., which began producing its new JH476 mechanical seat for heavy-duty truck.
The joint venture company, Chongqin Yanfeng Adient Seating Co. Ltd. (CQYFAS), is supplying this new model series with two versions of driver seats, featuring either a mechanical or a pneumatic suspension.
Speaking about the developments in China, Mr. Schaefer disclosed: “Adient has 3 joint ventures in China, and we have two seats here at the show from one of the JVs. One is pneumatic and the other is static.”
“We also have seats for Renault Trucks, which is the Alpine edition. We will start production of the seats for MAN for several of its new models by next year.”
“At present, we are producing up to 120,000 seats per year in Europe, and when the MAN business is on its way, we will be producing around 300,000 seats per year and will further extend our market share in Europe.” he added.