New Bridgestone Production System

Bridgestone has unveiled a new tyre production system which automates the entire manufacturing process from initial materials processing to final inspection of finished tyres. Called Bridgestone Innovative and Rational Development (BIRD), the system consists of three elements. First is Bridgestone’s Automated Tyre Manufacturing Synchronised System (ATMSS) technology covering materials processing to vulcanisation.

Second is Automated Inspection Modular System (AIMS) for automatic inspection of finished tyres and the third element is the Flow Oriented Approach (FOA) implementation of autonomous information processing for managing the system. Bridgestone claims that it is the world’s first tyre production system that extends to automatic inspection.BIRD, says Bridgestone, allows unprecedented latitude in designing tyres and the tyres produced are of improved quality and uniformity, up to and including high performance tyres.

It can produce different size tyres simultaneously, which means that production runs can be shorter and change-over times reduced. There are environmental advantages too, with reduced energy consumption and less output of carbon dioxide. Alongside the development of BIRD, Bridgestone has been active in improved raw materials technologies and the company participates directly in production of all the main materials used in production.

Bridgestone claims a number of benefits for BIRD, including adaptability to new kinds of tyres and improved product quality and uniformity. There are size and location advantages too, as a unit producing between 200,000 and 350,000 car tyres a year occupies between one-quarter and one-third as much space as a conventional plant and can be deployed wherever needed, allowing the principal markets to be supplied with cost-competitive, quality tyres, produced locally.The FOA element allows for remote monitoring and analysis of production processes in real time and differs fundamentally from conventional systems that provide for sharing data files on a host computer or file server.

Instead, each source of information broadcasts its information directly over the network. Thus, information about any aspect of production is available immediately across the network to all who need it. Bridgestone plans to employ FOA as an information framework for the group’s 45 tyre plants across the world.