Pirelli: from the revolutionary new MIRS process a revolutionary new tyre: the e-tyre
The innovative scope of e-manufacturing and the e-tyre can revolutionize the competitive system of the tyre industry. A total investment of EUR 500 million: five e-factories to be opened in three years. Important benefits also for the environment. An international contest on the Internet to name the new tyres.
Milan, 11 July 2000 Today Pirelli presented to the press and the financial world the first tyre manufacturing plant based on the revolutionary MIRS (Modular Integrated Robotized System) process, managed entirely on-line. MIRS: Bicocca hosts the first on-line plant The startup of this first e-factory, located in Milan's Bicocca area, is a fundamental step in the process of creating e-Pirelli, launched on 20 March and destined to be completed in three years thanks to important investments in human and financial resources. Within the framework of this Group transformation project, which will permit the on-line management of the entire company business cycle (from purchasing to marketing, from R&D to design, from production to logistics), MIRS represents the authentic backbone: e-manufacturing.
Only a few months after its first announcement, MIRS is already an industrial reality, a plant completely managed on-line for the production of a family of tyres with completely new characteristics: the e-tyres.
The plant being inaugurated today in Milan is the first of five MIRS operating units that will be opened over a three-year period in Italy, Germany, the UK, the United States, and the Far East, with an investment of EUR 500 milllion (to which are to be added building and services) entirely financed within the Sector and for a total installed production capacity of 10 million tyres/year. This corresponds to a 25 percent increase in Pirelli's current production capacity of car tyres, which will not replace existing capacity but will cover new demand and will thus have no impact on global Group employment levels.
The Bicocca Milan e-factory is destined to the production of high-performance tyres (V/Z segment, for the most prestigious cars), as well as a highly advanced run-flat tyre (capable of running even at zero pressure) to respond to the requirements of total mobility under the Pirelli Total Mobility (PTM) project. ./.2. Company plans also include using the new MIRS process to produce a new tyre concept, CYBER, an intelligent tyre capable of interfacing with the user. This is a new tyre concept that Pirelli intends to introduce this autumn.
Consisting of two e-factories of 125,000 tyres/year each (the first factory in operation now will be joined by a second within February 2001), the MIRS operating unit at Milan Bicocca would therefore have a full-capacity production of 250,000 tyres per year. The Milan plant will become also a pilot unit for further development of this technology, for the training of human resources and the development of products and prototypes, facing the needs of the different production unit within the Group. The software developed at the Bicocca plant will be transmitted on-line to the other MIRS units throughout the world, to allow the on-line starting of the production of new tyres.
It should also be underlined that studies are ongoing to widen the application of MIRS to the production of motorcycle and truck tyres. The first two prototype lines will be realized in the Milan production location within 2001.
MIRS: e-manufacturing is born
MIRS, Pirelli has totally revolutionized the technologies and traditional methods of tyre production. The new process is based, in fact, on the concept of highly flexible "minifactory" (flexible to the extent of one tyre per size) that can be strategically located according to market demand.
On a robotized space of about 350 square meters, necessary to lodge a MIRS minifactory, robots, working at an unprecedented speed for this industry, accomplish the entire production cycle from compounding to finished product, without interruption, without intermediates handling or storage phases, and without wasted energy. Thus the MIRS robots are capable of producing a tyre every three minutes.
This makes it possible to reduce the lead-time, from the raw materials warehouse to the finished products warehouse, from six days with the traditional process to 72 minutes with MIRS.
It is precisely by eliminating the storage phases that the entire production process can be concentrated in an extremely limited area, virtually eliminating the space required by the enormous quantities of materials and products that normally remain in circulation during the traditional process, in which only 12% of the materials are being processed at a given time, while 88% are stored waiting to enter the production cycle.
Integrated software controls every stage of production: robot movements, automatic provisioning of materials, selection of the size of tyre and thus construction drum, tyre building, curing, quality control, and finished product handling. But that is not all: this program, in turn, is part of a global software complex that upstream from the manufacturing phase presides over the engineering process to the design. It is a single architecture that starts with the definition of product specifications and automatically designs the mould, selects materials and designs the construction drum. The same software also defines the path drivers for the robots and manages their working cycle. It is here, in this total integration of design and manufacturing and product and process design, that the real secret of MIRS total flexibility resides.
The MIRS process technology radically changes the method of manufacturing tyres, reducing the processing phases from the traditional 14 to only three. Tyres are no longer assembled in successive batch operations. They are built continuously by robots directly around drums, which the machines pass on from one "mechanical hand" to the next, without stopping and without human intervention. On the drums, extruders gradually apply a strip reinforced with steel cords with a circumferential and axial deposition motion.
The movements of the robots permit the extruders to follow the entire profile of the tyre. The final assembly robot physically "hands" the drum with the green tyre to the next machine, whose job it is to feed the curing press. This latter is a sort of "carousel" with six moulds revolving around an axis, synchronised with the building process so as to maintain the process continuum. Once the vulcanization phase is finished, the same robot places the drum back into the production cycle. If the size changes, the same machine goes to get a drum of the required size. Meanwhile, the cured tyre reaches the final finishing department, where it goes through the final finishing phase: rigorous quality control via laser.
MIRS: the e-tyre is born
This innovative process and product technology offers the market a product of radically new conception in structural composition-the e-tyre-slated to appear this year on OEM fittings. The MIRS e-tire has totally innovative characteristics insofar as performance, reliability and comfort are concerned. The elimination of the batch approach, in fact, makes it possible to redefine product quality parameters, since each interruption, each human intervention introduces the theoretical possibility of product nonconformity, from the temperature excursions of intermediates during handling and storage to building joints and again to non-uniform heat distribution in the curing chamber. The MIRS e-tyre thus possesses a quality level far superior to the already high level of products obtained by the traditional process. Joint tests of this new tyre are already running with leading car manufacturers,for an homologation expected soon. The flexibility of the MIRS production process also accelerates the homologation process: whatever changes in specifications are requested by a carmaker these are immediately reflected in the sample tyres, shortening the prototype industrialization time.
MIRS: an eco-compatible technology
The MIRS process also has strong positive implications in terms of the environmental impact of the tyre production process.
Reducing the production phases and integrating them into a continuous process drastically reduces energy requirements. In the traditional process, each processing shutdown and restart requires a large consumption of specific energy for the cooling and handling of materials. By decreasing the steps from 14 to 3, the consumption of energy is also decreased, thanks to process simplification and the use of local generators in vulcanization, which drastically reduces heat dispersion.
MIRS also transforms logistics from a problem into an opportunity: not only from the obvious standpoint of just-in-time and transport cost reduction but also for the environmental value generated by the logistical flexibility of the plant. The reduction in transport flows (today the tyre industry sets hundreds of trucks into motion each day in Italy alone) results in an overall decrease in fuel consumption and thus in polluting emissions.
A contest on the Web to give a name to the e-tyres
To stress again that the new MIRS e-tyre belongs to the cybernetic universe, Pirelli has launched an international contest on the Internet, open to the creativity of all young Web surfers, to give a name to the new products that will be manufactured with this revolutionary technology. Thanks to the rich prizes available, the names chosen by Pirelli will also give their authors great satisfaction in economic terms. On its web site Pirelli will provide ample information on the contest, that will go on for one month and end in the Autumn.