Customer Stories
Brisa Bridgestone –a leader in the tire manufacturing industry in Turkey, with an annual revenue of app. Euro 500 million –celebrated the go-live of the new parallel planning solution. The new ICRON solution makes it possible to have an integrated parallel planning of the two main production processes: tire sub-components manufacturing and the tire-presses.
In the past the planning of the two main production lines was done separately and transaction based. The tire-presses produce the end-products, but are depending on the availability of the tire sub-components.
Murat Hepdurluk, Industrial Engineering Director of Brisa says: “ We were facing too much down-time of the tire-presses due to the separated planning of the tire sub-components production. This caused an unwanted decrease in utilization of the tire-presses, having a negative impact on the overall tire-production. Idle tire-presses, waiting for materials to be pressed, that’s typically not what we want. With the new parallel planning solution of ICRON we aimed to decrease the downtime of the tire-presses with 1 to 2 percent, the first results show that this might even be 3 to 5 percent”.
The new parallel planning solutions not only decreases the tire-presses down-time, it also has a positive effect on the planning efficiency. In average the planning time decreased with app. 25 percent. Planners now not only have a solution enabling, but also have time to monitor each others constrains. Hurdogan Gunes, Planning Manager at Brisa Bridgestone describes the key benefits of the ICRON solution: “ We can do all the planning in parallel now, where we used to do this serial. Besides that, we now also have integrated detailed monitoring capabilities. Our insight in the planning process has dramatically improved, we can now run daily reports and full stoppage control. Meaning we now know what caused a stoppage, what the effect on the KPI’s is. We have full view on all number of setups and finale production”.
The new parallel planning solution provides Brisa Bridgestone with information about all inventory levels for semi-finished products, which was not possible in the past. Related production departments can see each others’ plans, inventory levels and various important measurements. “The departments can determine points which need to be changed for more efficient planning outputs. It is easy to see machine loads of current plans. The modification possibilities of current plans are wide, fast and flexible”: says Nazmi Ziya Özgür, Senior Consultant of ICRON.
Mert Ertürer, Director Business Processes of ICRON about the business case: “ Brisa Bridgestone was convinced that with a better, parallel planning solution, they should be able to increase the capacity of the tire presses with at least 1 percent. With a total of 100+ tire presses, this would mean increasing the capacity with 1 or more tire presses.” In reality the parallel planning solution of ICRON will result in 3 to 5 percent improvement, adding 3 to 5 tire presses to the total capacity.
When the components flow into the pressing lines, they are in-time and just as planned, the pressing lines are continuously occupied. The whole process is more efficient, some presses might even become obsolete, while Brisa Bridgestone is able to produce the same number of products. The planners prepare all plans in a shorter period of time, due to the fact that ICRON ’s solution is able to provide multi-user work simultaneously within same departments. Planners create plans with the help of monitoring operator constraints, setup constraints and pallet constraints.
Murat Hepdurluk, Industrial Engineering Director of Brisa gives some insight in the future: “ Brisa is growing fast and we need to be able to handle the demand increase. A second factory will be established on a 950,000-square-meter area with an investment of 300 million USD. The factory in, which Brisa targets to start production in 2018 they will manufacture tires for passenger and light commercial vehicles. In this respect Brisa will add an extra 4.2 million units annually to the current manufacturing capacity, thus increasing the overall capacity by 30 percent. With the new Parallel Planning solution of ICRON the absolute increase by 30 percent, in fact now means a total increase by 35 percent: combining the effect on the actual and the expected production volume”.
About BRISA Bridgestone
Brisa Bridgestone is a joint venture between the Bridgestone Corporation and the Sabanci Group, Brisa manufactures and sells an extensive range of tires under the Bridgestone and Lassa brands. Brisa’s 361,000-square-meter production plant is one of the world’s largest tire manufacturing facility under a single roof, and one of the most important manufacturing bases globally for the Bridgestone Corporation.
Brisa Bridgestone manufactures tires under the brand names Bridgestone and Lassa, for passenger cars, light commercial vehicles, buses, trucks, tractors and construction equipment all in compliance with international standards regarding the safety and quality criteria as well as import Firestone branded tractor tires, Dayton branded passenger car tires, Kinesis solid forklift tires and Bridgestone motorcycle tires, thus offering a total of 1,800 varieties of tires to the market. The main brands are Bridgestone, Lassa, Firestone, Dayton and Kinesis tire brands, Bandag tire retreading brand, Energizer battery brand.
The products and services are provided at over 1,300 sign-boarded sales points. The Lassa branded tires manufactured with the manual labor of Brisa workers are at the disposal of the vehicle owners in more than 60 countries and at over 580 sign-boarded sales points. At the same time, automotive manufacturers like Oyak Renault, Toyota, Ford Otosan, Fiat, Honda, Mercedes Benz, BMC, Temsa, Anadolu Isuzu, Otokar, Karsan, Türk Traktör and MAN use the products of both Lassa and Bridgestone tires as original equipment.
For more information please contact: hello@icrontech.com
