Company Profile
Bridgestone Corporation is the world’s largest manufacturer of tyres and rubber products. It employs over 140,000 people worldwide, operates 184 plants in 25 nations and sells products in more than 150 countries.
Bridgestone Europe (BSEU) is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium and employs over 13,000 people. It has nine tyre manufacturing plants, several of which are in Spain, three logistics centres (one in Madrid), a major R&D and testing centre in Italy and two state-of-the-art proving grounds.
Bridgestone tyres are fitted to one in every five vehicles in the world including everything from motorcycles and cars to tractors and commercial vehicles. All of the world’s major car manufacturers fit Bridgestone tyres as original equipment. In Europe most of the company’s sales come from the aftermarket.
The Business Challenge
With tyres critical to the safety of drivers and passengers in the world’s one billion plus vehicles, Bridgestone takes its commitment to those using the 200 million fitted with its products extremely seriously. Bridgestone’s company mission “Serving Society with Superior Quality” requires all parts of its business to deliver to the highest levels of performance and reliability. Meeting this commitment, while keeping the company as a competitive leader in the global tyre market, requires state-of-the-art systems to monitor and control production and logistics. Strict quality control and full traceability are essential. The product ID of every tyre needs to be captured and stored, so that wherever it is used it can always be traced back to its origin.
Bridgestone’s huge plant in Burgos, Spain manufactures vast quantities of tyres every hour, requiring real-time visibility of the production, storage and distribution to optimise operations. For Bridgestone to maintain its profitable and market-leading position it needs to maximise the availability of products to customers, while minimising inventory across its diverse range of products
Warehouse Efficiency
Updating its warehouse forklifts with the latest generation of vehicle-mounted mobile computers has helped Bridgestone to speed up data handling, drive down error rates and eliminate unnecessary forklift mileage, saving time, cost and energy consumption.
After evaluation against other rugged vehicle-mounted computers, Bridgestone chose to equip its forklifts with Honeywell’s Thor VX8 mobile computers. As well as being much more affordable and more powerful than rival devices, the fact that the Thor VX8 can run the Windows XP operating system also meant that it could be seamlessly integrated into Bridgestone’s existing warehouse management software. It also offers the company a simpler route for migration to any other system in the future.
Hands-Free Scanning
Bridgestone production workers need to examine every tyre to ensure product quality is to the highest standard before capturing individual product IDs, a crucial but time-consuming process. Introducing Honeywell 8650 Bluetooth Ring Scanners has helped to speed this process up. By wearing the ring scanner on a finger employees keep both hands free for handling heavy and bulky tyres. Data capture is achieved quickly, safely and comfortably by simply pointing the finger and scanner at the barcode.
Mobile Troubleshooting
Bridgestone’s business analysts and managers in production, logistics and warehouse operations need to be able to monitor and respond to business issues as and when they arise. By deploying several Honeywell Dolphin 7800 mobile computers, they are able to identify and respond to situations wherever they occur much more quickly than before.
Mobile Device Management
Managing all of an enterprise’s mobile devices can be a complex, disruptive and labour-intensive operation, especially over an extensive site. By successfully deploying Honeywell’s Remote Mastermind to manage its entire estate of mobile devices Bridgestone has been able to free up its IT department to concentrate on core activities, while spending a fraction of the time previously required for updates and diagnostics. Disruption to users is also minimised as devices are kept deployed in the field.
Conclusion
The range of Honeywell solutions deployed in different areas allows Bridgestone to fulfill its mission: “Serving Society with Superior Quality” by offering high performance, improved quality and efficiency, error reduction and cost savings.
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