NEU-ISENBURG, Germany—Hankook Tire & Technology Ltd. has entered a strategic partnership with cloud computing provider Amazon Web Services as part of an effort to drive future-oriented product development.
"As we continue to drive our technological strategy, collaborating with AWS will enable Hankook to further strengthen these efforts," Soo Il Lee, Hankook's chief operating officer, said in a statement. "The introduction of AWS to our processes underscores Hankook Tire's commitment to innovation, further bringing technology to the core of our business as a leading global automotive company."
The collaboration also supports Hankook's development of its virtual compound design, which predicts the material properties of tires and uses artificial intelligence to determine an optimal compound, the South Korean tire maker said.
The AWS cloud platform also will enable Hankook to store the data obtained from the VCD system, process it and analyze it more efficiently. According to the tire maker, AWS offers a platform for the analysis of large amounts of data as well as "innovative solutions" for manufacturers who want to enter new business areas.
Through the partnership, Hankook said it will use digital high-tech solutions, such as the machine learning application, to Amazon SageMaker, "a fully managed service that provides developer and data scientists with the ability to build, train, and deploy machine learning models quickly." The tire maker is counting on SageMaker to support the development of tire performance. The AI platform, Hankook noted, will allow it to better analyze, prepare and provide relevant data in a "fully automated way," while helping to summarize the necessary conclusions into a prediction or action.
Hankook rebranded as a tire and technology company last year to strengthen its focus on research and development for future-oriented technologies.
The company expects its global research and development headquarters Hankook Technodome, opened in 2016, to enable it to focus on "qualitative tire development" and to increase competitiveness in the long term.