Bridgestone VP: Automation needs commitment

LONDON — Adolfo Llorens, vice present of manufacturing at Bridgestone Europe/Middle East/Africa, shared some thoughts recently about new technology trends in the tire manufacturing industry with Shahrzad Pourriahi of European Rubber Journal.

Q: What is driving the adoption of integrated automation across the tire industry?

A; The big picture is that tire demand overall is growing steadily. We're having to produce more tires, in multiple sizes, with intricate technical specifications, and faster…all while ensuring the great quality and high safety standards that drivers expect and deserve.

Also, transparency in the supply chain is becoming really important and automation helps with that. Car makers are looking across the full production process to guarantee that the vehicle is being produced in the most efficient way. Bringing automation into tire manufacturing means we can produce all the data we need to demonstrate efficiency and to improve our performance based on what we've learned.

Q: How is this playing out at Bridge-stone's operations in Europe?

A: We've got 11 tire plants across EMEA region, so we're always looking at how we can optimize our local operations. We launched the Bridgestone Innovative and Rational Development technology a few years ago. It was the first automated tire-manufacturing technology within our business, able to perform all the actions of tire manufacturing automatically, right from component manufacturing through to tread and vulcanizing the finished tire. This technology allows us to produce 128 different tire sizes at the same time.

More recently, we invested $310 million in three of our European sites — in Burgos, Spain; and Poznan and Stargard, Poland — to install the most advanced production technology available in autonomous vehicle systems and high-capacity machinery.

Q: What are the main challenges around the introduction of increased integration/automation within tire plants?

A: Introducing automation does require commitment and investment from the business. Once you have the commitment, the investment follows. We've just announced a $11 million investment in our Tatabanya plant in Hungary, which is a state-of-the-art facility. It already has fully automated storage, including the final inspection and a palletizing system, which means we deliver more efficiently and more accurately.

Automated processes also can't be implemented without some serious planning, modeling, and foresight. You have to have the right people and the right skills to do those things. In addition, our Tatabanya plant expansion is going to give us a new training center where we can train our staff for this very purpose. We're firmly in industry 4.0 now and businesses that can't overcome these barriers to automation are going to find it really hard to compete.

Q: How is the move to more automated manufacture affecting group organisational-structures?

A: Each business is going to have specific needs on this point. There are definitely some where the manufacturing, management, operations, and technology teams are going to have to find new ways to work together to make sure that automation is properly supported across the company.

For us, it isn't such a big shift because we've been looking at automation in our production lines since the 1990s and so have been adapting over several decades. Our organization can already support further changes, and it's totally clear to everyone involved what the ambition and value is to the group.

Q: Finally, what about the skills-sets within the management and the workforce?

A: As the technologies available to the industry keep evolving, the skills we'll need will change, too.

So we're constantly training our people and making sure they have the most current knowledge — and across the entire business, not just manufacturing. Both the factory and the office workforces supporting automation need to be on top of their game. We have a fantastic process in place where our factories can exchange best practice too. Our new Tatabanya training center is also going to be a big part of our effort to make sure we have the most advanced skills.