HIKONE, Japan—Bridgestone Corp. has developed and employed a tire building and molding system, dubbed “Examation,” that it claims uses artificial intelligence to heighten tire quality, productivity and uniformity.
The new system, being implemented at the company's Hikone factory, is based in part on and is thus considered an evolution of the Bridgestone Innovative and Rational Development production system that the Tokyo-based tire maker developed in the late 1990s/early 2000s.
The new system uses artificial intelligence to control the optimal placement of all components in a tire, Bridgestone said, which results in an improvement of uniformity of 15 percent or more.