Rockwell Automation takes the tyre industry into the cloud

At this year’s event, Rockwell Automation presented tire industry professionals with the latest technologies and services it has developed to help them address many of the industry’s most pressing concerns.

According to Paolo Butti, Industry Manager Automotive and Tire EMEA at Rockwell Automation: “Rockwell Automation enjoys a strategic position in the worldwide tire industry, with many of the world’s leading tire producers and suppliers standardising on our automation, process and information solutions. Aside from the technology, we have a vital consultancy role to play too, backed up our broad and deep industry experience.

“What we are seeing in the industry, he continued, “is an evolution as opposed to a revolution, with many of our customers starting journeys that will take them into connected workspaces through the deployment of smart machines and smarter manufacturing principles. These advances rely on data to take them forwards and we are in the perfect position to help our customers with this digital transformation and convergence.” 

On the second day of the conference, Dominique Scheider, Strategic Account Team Leader at Rockwell Automation, France, delivered a presentation entitled ‘Delivering the tyre plant of the future today’. Scheider discussed the increasing connectivity available to tyre plants - thanks to smart enabling technologies - and how a digitally transformed Connected Enterprise can deliver greater efficiencies, higher cost savings and superior manufacturing intelligence.

In addition to access to real time data, he also informed attendees how they could leverage contemporary cloud and analytical platforms to change how issues are solved and how productivity could be further improved.

With globalisation, consolidation, changing global standards, new vehicle technologies, stricter government regulations and consumer demand for greater performance at a lower price driving the need for change in the industry, integrated data-rich solutions that span the tire design, development, and production processes are needed to produce better tires more efficiently.

The Connected Enterprise links data from production lines, utilities and enterprise IT and delivers contextualised information where and when it is needed. By analysing this contextualised information, tire producers can more easily identify patterns and cost and energy-saving opportunities, while also enhancing predictive maintenance and boosting productivity.