Tire Manufacturing

Tire manufacturing is a lengthy and complicated process requiring multiple discrete components (beads, belt, ply, sidewall, sipe and groove, shoulder, and tread). Many machines and processes are involved in creating the final product beginning with the mixing of raw ingredients followed by milling, forming, and assembly of a “green” tire. The green tire is then cured and formed through a vulcanization process followed by final finishing steps.

SOURCE: Tyre Manufacturing (iloencyclopaedia.org)

Each manufacturing process requires machinery to reliably produce the required output consistently and efficiently while meeting required environmental, health, safety, and product quality requirements.

There are tens of thousands of inherent failure modes (part – problem – reason) in a tire manufacturing process asset base. Reliability begins with clearly understanding the equipment failure modes and developing a maintenance strategy to detect and proactively mitigate them before unplanned failure occurs.

Visualization of Failure Mode Library

For example:

A Banbury mixing line has approximately 4200 inherent failure modes that can shut the mixer down.
A typical extruder has between 120 and 390 failure modes depending on the extruder type that can shut your extruder down.
A calendar mill has 850 inherent failure modes that can shut the mill down.
A curing press has between 550 and 1200 inherent failure modes depending on load/unload capability, that can shut your press down.

A typical maintenance strategy addressing these inherent failure modes of key critical assets includes predictive maintenance (PdM) technology inspections and preventive maintenance (PM) inspections with the following coverage mix:

Is your maintenance strategy designed with the appropriate mix of PdM vs. PM inspections to optimize resources and capabilities and able to detect and prevent these failure modes from shutting down your manufacturing process unexpectedly?

Case Study

Allied Reliability helped one major tire manufacturer improve asset reliability by developing and implementing PdM technologies and proactive maintenance activities for the early detection and elimination of defects.

Results gained:

70% improvement in asset health over three years
>4,000 defects detected proactively in year one
>8,000 hours of unplanned downtime avoided in four years

What could you do with an additional 8,000 hours of manufacturing capability?

Reliability Improvement Workshop

The tire industry is expecting continued global growth in the years ahead. Is your reliability system and asset base able to capitalize on it?

In this workshop, Allied Reliability will introduce the strategies required for asset reliability programs and provide insight into where your company can best benefit from aligned focus and improvement.

Reduce Your Carbon and Energy Footprint

Carbon footprint reduction is critical to tire manufacturers' environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. Efforts in this space support improvement of our environment and provide significant cost savings to tire manufacturers employing this focus.

There are multiple approaches to be taken to support GHG reductions through reduced energy consumption, all driven through asset reliability in the following ways:

Precision alignment - reduces component stress & friction, improving component life and reducing energy requirements for operation.
Compressed air leak detection and elimination - eliminates drops in system pressure which negatively impacts compressor life, causes inefficient air-operated component operation negatively impacting component life, improves the overall reliability of plant operations, and reduces the need for compressors to work harder to compensate while consuming more energy, in turn, improving the lifecycle of the compressor system.
Steam leak detection and elimination - improves the overall reliability of plant operations, removes a significant burn safety hazard, and improves the efficiency and life cycle of the plant boiler system with significantly reduced energy requirements for operation.
Power quality analysis and improvement - eliminates the potential of equipment failures and malfunctions through overheating and damage to electrical components caused by poor power quality while reducing spend by efficiently utilizing incoming power.

Allied Reliability helped another tire manufacturer reduce energy consumption through precision maintenance training and implementing an air & steam leak detection and reporting system.

Results gained: