Pirelli Tyre wins Ford "Oscar" award for reliability and product quality
The US production facility of Pirelli Tyre, with its Mirs technology, has qualified for the prestige Q1 Award from Ford Motor Company for its product quality and its customer care
Italian tyres are increasingly important contenders at the top end of the US market for cars and SUVs
Rome, Georgia (USA), 14th December 2006. Pirelli's robotized tyre-manufacturing technology has gained one of American industry's highest awards for quality and reliability: the Ford Motor Company Q1 award.
The US carmaker elected Pirelli Tire North America for its quality supplier award on the strength of "the excellence of its operations and the exceptional standard of its customer care" at the Pirelli manufacturing facility in Rome (Georgia), which utilizes Mirs technology (Modular integrated robotized system) to produce high-performance tyres for cars and SUVs. This is the second distinction that Pirelli Tyre has obtained in the United States in just three months: in September a market survey by J.D.Power & Associates Institute involving 23,000 US motorists found that Pirelli tyres enjoyed top preference status among American buyers in the mass-market/non-luxury segment.
Pirelli Tyre CEO, Francesco Gori, in remarking on the award, stated: "Q1 is a distinction of the highest standing and confirms the rapid advance made by our operations in the United States . Pirelli Tire North America focuses it efforts on select targets both in the renewals and in the original equipment markets, and in this strategy Ford Motor Company represents a key element ".
The car industry increasingly demands that its suppliers demonstrate a capacity to work to set international standards: among these the Ford Q1 Program is one of the most rigorous and testing. To secure Q1 status suppliers must be able to guarantee compliance with a number of core production and quality parameters. Pirelli Tyre has fulfilled or out-performed all the bench-mark criteria in each Q1 category as a Ford supplier.
In the US, thanks to Mirs robotized technology, Pirelli manages to manufacture an extensive and varied range of high-performance products such as can meet any requirement in a market as demanding and as segmented as the America one ? ranging through original equipment for the Ford Mustang, the Ford F-150 "Harley" ? including the top version of this pick up, and extending to the Dodge SRT 10, America's most powerful SUV.