Goodyear Advances Connected-Business Model with Automated Tire Facility
- Growth in Vehicle Models, Options Drives Increasing Demand for Premium Tires
- Innovative Mercury Production Process Allows On-Demand Fulfillment of Customer Orders
- New Luxembourg Facility to Begin Production in 2019
Colmar-Berg, September 12, 2017 – Advancing its connected-business model, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company today announced plans to create a new facility in Luxembourg that utilizes an innovative production process to meet growing customer and consumer demand for premium tires.
Named Mercury, the proprietary process features highly-automated, interconnected workstations, using additive manufacturing technologies to efficiently produce premium tires in small-batch quantities on-demand for replacement and original equipment customers.
Goodyear Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President Richard J. Kramer announced Mercury and the company’s plans at the groundbreaking event for the facility in presence of Etienne Schneider, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of the Economy.
“Mercury addresses the increasing complexity in the tire industry as the number of vehicle models and options available to consumers continues to proliferate,” said Kramer. “It gives us the capability to increase our speed and flexibility to meet the growing demand for small volumes of high-margin, premium Goodyear tires and to deliver them to customers on demand, faster than ever.”
“Mercury will advance our connected business model, which aligns all of our assets – from the production floor to consumers who choose Goodyear online and at retail,” he added. “It will complement our existing high-volume facilities and give us a true competitive advantage.”
According to Minister Schneider: “Goodyear’s visionary project further strengthens the ties between Goodyear and the Grand Duchy and offers many future opportunities for a close collaboration with the Ministry of the Economy, as well as with the Luxembourg research ecosystem. As the first important American company to settle in Luxembourg, Goodyear marked a new beginning in Luxembourg’s industrial history in 1951. With the announcement today of the Industry 4.0 Mercury Project, Luxembourg and Goodyear are both writing again another piece of Luxembourg’s industrial history and it’s economic diversification by entering together in the new era of digitalized industry. All this fits perfectly with our vision to make Luxembourg an internationally recognized platform for sustainable industrial excellence through innovative solutions.”
The new facility, set to open in 2019, is in close proximity to Goodyear’s Luxembourg innovation center and a tire proving grounds. The company is investing $77 million in the facility, which will produce approximately 500,000 tires annually and create approximately 70 new full-time positions.
The technology used in the Mercury production process was developed and tested over the past five years at Goodyear’s innovation and development centers. The name Mercury is a reference to the mythical god of trade and travel, which inspired the creation of Goodyear’s winged foot logo by company founder Frank A. Seiberling.
