Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Ltd., Hitachi, Ltd., and PTC are collaborating to deploy a tire production solution, leveraging an advanced AI/IoT platform, for achieving high-quality, high-efficiency processes across its many factories worldwide.
Industrial companies today are faced with a variety of challenges, including increasing customer needs, intensifying global competition, and serious labor shortages due to an aging population in Japan. To address these issues and to enhance its market competitiveness, Sumitomo Rubber teams, in conjunction with Hitachi and PTC, have developed a highly-efficient, lean production solution that leverages advanced digital technologies and that will be deployed in its tire production factories that produce such globally recognized brands as DUNLOP and FALKEN.
This initiative consists of three world-class companies collaborating and synergistically combining their technologies and expertise to deploy a highly efficient solution:
Sumitomo Rubber – with its advanced tire production technology.
PTC – with its ThingWorx*1 Industrial IoT platform and extensive consulting experience in the industrial space.
Hitachi – with its Lumada*2 solution, an advanced digital technology that combines their long-nurtured OT*3 and IT technologies and that provides analysis technology using 4M*4 data from the shop floor.
With the new solution, Sumitomo Rubber will monitor real-time production machinery performance data using PTC’s ThingWorx Industrial IoT platform. ThingWorx will enable Sumitomo Rubber to integrate data from myriad sources and standardize a variety of factory automation systems that are used on production lines across its manufacturing locations. This critical business information will then feed into Hitachi’s Lumada AI applications, which will comprehensively analyze the data and quickly and accurately search for and extract factors impacting quality, productivity, predictive maintenance of production machinery, and/or energy consumption. This comprehensive solution, consisting of Hitachi and PTC technology, will help accelerate decision making and achieve more efficient production with insightful, AI-driven analysis.
Sumitomo Rubber recently deployed the solution in its Nagoya Factory (located in the city of Toyota, Aichi) in pilot mode, and saw impressive results:
These impressive metrics convinced the team to commence deploying the system worldwide, with an intention to complete the deployment at all 12 tire production factories by 2025.
Overview of AI/IoT platform-based high-quality, high-efficiency production system
*1 ThingWorx
ThingWorx is a platform that enables gathering, organizing and modeling data coming from machinery/devices as well as application development. The platform also seamlessly integrates with surrounding systems, allowing customers to integrate analytics systems and also to develop applications that leverage IoT data.
https://www.ptc.com/en/products/iiot
*2 Lumada
Lumada is Hitachi’s advanced digital solutions, services, and technologies for turning data into insights to drive digital innovation.
https://www.hitachi.com/products/it/lumada/global/en/index.html
*3 OT: Operational Technology
*4 4M: Man, Machine, Material, Method