Analysis: Greenfield thinking by plant designers

One recent pointer to the future direction for tire production is offered by Apollo Tyres, which is currently establishing a new tire plant in Gyongyoshalasz, Hungary. This will serve as a “benchmark manufacturing facility” for group, the India-based tire maker has stated.

“We are out in the market and procuring the most updated manufacturing technology for our Hungary plant, said Markus Korsten, chief manufacturing officer of Apollo Tyres Ltd. “In addition, the layout of the equipment, and the way it will be operated, will guarantee the highest level of quality to the customers, based on highest efficiency rates.”

The new plant, he said, will be designed to address the bottlenecks experienced in traditional tire plants, particularly today’s increasing market demands for greater flexibility in the manufacture and supply of tires.

“A major constraint for our industry today is the management of complexity,” said Korsten, noting how the number of units for a particular tire size is reducing, and number of sizes to be produced, is increasing.

This challenge, he commented, “has to be answered with higher capabilities on flexibility. This flexibility is required for the equipment, and also for the workforce. All this, backed up with intelligent standardisation in components and materials, will get us the right answers to this.”

Asked about Apollo’s plans for the rubber mixing processes at the Gyongyoshalasz facility, the manufacturing leader said the company would be using the most modern, contemporary mixing equipment and technology – without giving further details.

He did, though, say that the goal will be to produce “the best of high-performance and full-silica tires for passenger vehicles and to produce the best of TBR tires. We would try and reduce the manual intervention by incorporating optimal ergonomic solutions.”

Korsten went on to say that automation levels at this plant will be higher than any of Apollo’s existing plants, though he added: “This does not mean that we are installing robots at each work place; we are looking for low cost automation solutions, especially in material transport and handling, this will help us in achieving significant improvements in labour efficiency.”

In designing the new facility, Apollo is leveraging its expertise in the area of simulation – as applied previously, for example, in the design of the mixing line at its Enschede plant in The Netherlands. There the technology was used to optimise the material flow and workplace design: simulating a virtual mockup, which was created by Apollo in collaboration with a university partner.

Alongside the use of advanced technologies, the company is also focused on the use of more conventional ‘assists’ such as gravity to improve the efficiency of its materials handling and storage activities.

“The utilisation of height comes into play as a natural aid in material flow,” said Korsten. “We are utilising that principle for some of our low-cost automation solutions. Furthermore, we are using the height for storing of material to save floor space.”

New approaches

While Apollo has not identified any suppliers for the new facility in Hungary, companies offering new approaches to control & automation will clearly be on its list of potential suppliers.

Explaining the latest advances to this technology, Kai Tuomisaari, vice president, sales and projects, pointed to “the introduction of Cimcorp’s MES (manufacturing execution system) dedicated for tire manufacture. It ensures100-percent traceability of the production history of each tire and tracing of raw materials, components, green tires and finished tires.

“Automation with total process flow control takes care of the complete internal transportation logistics between processes and storage areas. It covers interfaces to PLCs, robot controllers and upper host and provides optimised material flow and visualisation. It simply guarantees that the right product is in the right place at the right time.”

Asked about the external technologies that are contributing most to improving the effectiveness of Cimcorp’s Dream Factory concept, Tuomisaari was enthusiastic about current moves by tire manufacturers to add bar codes to the tires.

“It is a great improvement and gives a lot of possibilities for automation,” he commented. “Now we can identify and trace the tire throughout the manufacturing process.”

Tire companies have also invested in their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that make data collection, processing and tracing possible, Tuomisaari continued. “Also some process machine manufacturers have equipped their machines with cell controls or platforms that allow easier connection to upper level systems”.

For its part, Cimcorp has been developing an MES dedicated to tire manufacture. This, the VP noted, would not be possible without the advance of external control/IT technologies.

With regards to the next steps forward, the Cimcorp executive pointed to automation with total material and data-flow control.

These capabilities, said Tuomisaari, can ensure “100% availability of materials, components and tires in each process phase, minimum buffer storages meaning less work In process (sic) (WIP), and just in time (JIT) deliveries to different processes. That’s how the tire manufacturers can decrease the amount of scrap and increase production capacity.”

Mixing challenge

Perhaps the most difficult area of the tire manufacturing plant to automate is the mixing area due to its traditional reliance on batch processes – many often requiring manual interventions by workers who often have to operate in unpleasant working environments.

Among the equipment makers seeking to change all this is Mesnac, which has advanced an interesting series of mixing equipment developments including for mixer feeding, small chemical weighing and one-step mixing.

The Mesnac mixer feeding system features an independently-developed slab cutter, soft powder scale and fluidised scale, according to Li Lubo, deputy general manager of the Chinese company’s dosing system division.

“Our slab cutter [allows] automatic mixture of the rubber and improves rubber uniformity. Small power fluctuations in the mixing process further extends mixer service life. On top of it high automation reduces mixing time and improves productivity.”

The sensors on the soft powder scale are “specially installed” and the scale structure is designed to ensure a C6 level accuracy of the scale, Lubo also pointed out. The unit is equipped with an automated scale calibration unit to ensure the accuracy of powder scale.

The injection accuracy of the fluidised scale is said to be within 1 percent. It is also possible to eliminate interference of material viscosity and density during the weighing process to ensure weighing precision.

The small chemical weighing system, meanwhile, is said to deliver precise and efficient batching and weighing of powder and polymer.

Our latest model realises automated bagging, sealing and stacking and achieves unmanned operation in the weighing zone, said Lubo. “Our weighing acceptance rate is higher than 99.5 percent and the efficiency could reach 800 bags/shift (8 hours/shift. Efficient dust-collector realises a dust discharge density of less than 5mg/m3.”

Compared with traditional [multi-step] mixing methods, the productivity is improved by 80 percent, while the labour cost is reduced by 40 percent with two-to-three operators for the entire line, said Wang Jianjun, engineer in Mesnac dosing system division.

“The production efficiency of one-step mixing system is comparable to the total output of one 370L mixer and one 270L mixer. Small chemicals [can] be loaded online and save the need of off-line operation.

Other significant advantages, he said, include a 20-percent reduction in energy costs and lower fumes pollution “which greatly improves the manufacture environment in the mixing workshop.”