Sumitomo: Intersection of innovation, sustainability drives the tire industry

AKRON—To understand both the sustainability and innovation of an intelligent tire, the industry must look at where these concepts intersect.

It's a philosophy David Johansen, vice president of technical operations at Sumitomo Rubber USA, discussed at the Tire Society's 42nd Annual Conference in his presentation, "The Intersection of Tire Intelligence and Sustainability."

"Intersection is … taking a look at not just intelligence, not just sustainability, but how all those things work together and how we can drive performance improvements for our company," Johansen said.

For Sumitomo, balancing innovation with sustainability predates the tire industry to Masamoto Sumitomo in the Edo period of Japan.

Masamoto Sumitomo, who founded a medicine and book shop in Kyoto, Japan, in the early 1600s, was the originator of what would become the Sumitomo group of companies, Johansen said, noting the founder's principles are what drive the company's decisions and philosophies today.

"The key part about him was his owner's precepts," Johansen said. "The philosophy of how to treat customers, how to treat the environment, how to treat business moving forward. And it's not just about making a profit. It's about benefiting the self and others, and that private and public interest are the same. And then continuing to focus on our activities through the foresight and flexibility based on the changing times.

"This has been in the philosophy that has driven Sumitomo over 400 years," he said.

And as today's emerging forces in innovation and sustainability bring both challenges and opportunities, finding where these forces all intersect is paramount to the tire industry's success.

"When you take a look at the market itself and the environment, there are some changes we've been experiencing," Johansen said. Some of these changes are more "traditional forces" with which the industry is more familiar, others are "current forces" to what the industry is still adapting, and finally there are "emerging forces" to which the industry may only recently have been introduced.

Traditional forces, he said, include balancing the health and safety of products, reducing time to market, the implementation of virtual development and scrap tire solutions.

"These are more the forces that we all are used to in the industry," he said, adding however, that "the speed at which they are happening is continuing to increase."

Current forces in the industry include the transition to new mobility—like electric, connected and autonomous vehicles; mobility as a service; tires with sensors vs. tires as sensors; growing regulations; increased attention on climate change; and material sourcing in a circular economy.

And emerging forces include the "accelerated awareness of (the industry's) environmental impacts" and new testing methods "that can isolate different chemicals," he said, pointing more specifically to the growing research behind 6ppd and 6ppd-quinone.

"Until about three years ago, 6ppd was not really known about by anybody outside of the tire industry," Johansen said. "But these days, everybody is talking about 6ppd and 6ppd-quinone and the impact that it has on the Pacific Northwest and the coho salmon."

Johansen said these forces are changes that the entire industry must address. But as a company, it is important for Sumitomo to "understand how holistically we can respond to these challenges."

Sumitomo does this by working on its circular economy concept through its "sustainable value ring"—or Towanowa.

"Towa" means "everlasting" in Japanese, and "wa" means "ring," according to Sumitomo Rubber Industries' website.

"Our purpose is, through innovation, to create a future of joy and wellbeing for all. And this approach is really focusing on a circular economy, but with two rings."

This two-ring concept includes a ring for data and a ring for sustainability that pass information between each other.

Through Sumitomo's Towanowa concept, the tire maker uses data it collects from modeling tools and its proprietary Sensing Core technology to help develop a sustainable tire "in all steps of the design process, whether it's tire design, materials, manufacturing, sales and usage, and end-of-life situations."

This has helped Sumitomo enhance tire efficiencies and improve lightweight performance, fuel economy and treadwear performance, Johansen said, noting the company is targeting a 20-percent reduction in tire weight and a 30-percent reduction in rolling resistance over the next few years. He added that Sumitomo also plans to launch a next-generation EV tire by 2027.

Johansen drew attention to Sumitomo's simulation tools as part of the data ring, such as its 4-D Nano Design technology, which looks at tires at a molecular level.

Using this data, Sumitomo can redesign and reformulate its tires, which intersects with the material development node of its sustainability ring, Johansen said.

He said with this technology, Sumitomo can identify more ways to utilize more plant-based resources without impacting the performance and overall quality of the tire, especially as Sumitomo targets 40-percent bio-based and recycled materials in its tires by 2030, and 100-percent sustainable materials by 2050.

From a production and logistics perspective, Johansen said, Sumitomo looks at both how materials are brought to its factories and how its finished products are brought to its users.

"We're working on ways we can optimize that process more toward localized supply chains, working with electric vehicles (or) energy friendly ships to be able to move tires to the different regions of the world and to be able to reduce (our) CO2 emissions," he said.

The company also is rethinking the energy levels it uses at its manufacturing facilities.

"Our goal is to reduce our factories' CO2 emissions by 50 percent in 2030 and (achieve) full carbon neutrality on (Scope) 1 and 2 by 2050."

To achieve this, Sumitomo is looking to alternative sources of energy, like solar and hydrogen power at its Shirakawa, Japan, factory.

The facility began implementing solar and hydrogen power in 2021 and, as of this year, has gotten into full production with these sustainable energy sources, he said, adding that about 60,000 tires per year are produced through this method.

For sales and usage, Sumitomo is looking to further develop its Sensing Core technology, which is an expansion of the company's depletion warning system, or DWS. This technology, Johansen said, can detect tire pressure, tire load, tire wear, road conditions and wheel looseness.

By enhancing this system and using its data, Sumitomo can develop tires with better fuel efficiency and greater safety features for its consumers.

Sumitomo also uses its Sensing Core technology for tire recycling and material recovery. The technology can help identify the point where a tire is worn but before damage to the carcass occurs to promote greater retreadability in truck and some light truck tires.

Innovation and sustainability must also intersect when it comes to recycling, he said, as different technologies are required to reclaim materials from ELT.

"This is our framework of how we want to respond to the new challenges that come," Johansen said.

Sumitomo wants to use Towanowa to respond, not react, to new challenges using the company's history and expertise.

"Some of this we can do ourselves," he said, adding that Sumitomo continues to advance its sustainability solutions. "Others will take an industry-wide response. … It's those connecting points."

"The challenges that we're facing as an industry—both now and in the future—they're greater than what any tire company, any supplier, any university can address by themselves. We want to work with you to find the solutions to these challenges."