Tyre's traceability. Internal track and trace project in the Pirelli's plant of Carlisle, UK

The automotive industry has been experiencing profound changes in recent years in order to respond to regulatory changes and new market requirements primarily influenced by safety issues. Therefore, within this context, it is increasingly necessary for companies in the sector to evolve and change organizations and processes to satisfy regulatory standards and quality requirements, and then to compete in a tough market. It is easy to understand how relevant the safety of a car and its components are. All OEM leaders are asking their suppliers to comply with increasingly difficult quality requirements. There is another cause that is pushing the companies to revise their own business: the world economic crisis. The world market, and specifically the automotive sector, is facing a major crisis that is leading businesses to discover new markets in which to operate and consequently compete. The competition leads companies to review their business, modify, add and delete activities, in order to reach one goal: to sell a product and a service that are more and more valuable for the customer. The paths the companies should take to meet higher customer’s expectations are many and each can impact differently on the operations, business, management and staff. The objective of this paper is to present a project carried out by a leading company operating globally in the tire industry. The goal of this endeavour is to confirm the output according to the specific requirements of the major OEMs and the will to exploit this obligation as a lever to improve the business. In order to define more in detail the scope of action, it is necessary to introduce the company. We are in the automotive industry, in particular, in a company that produces standard and high range tires for the following markets: automotive, motorcycle, bicycle, sport, truck transport for people or goods and industrial vehicles. The company is Pirelli & C. SpA, founded in 1872 in the Bicocca district in Milan. Pirelli is one of the leading manufacturers of premium tires in the world, with a profitability among the highest in the industry. It operates in more than 160 countries on four continents with 22 industrial facilities. In the early 2000 the major Pirelli’s customers, such as Porsche, Ford, BMW and Land Rover, asked their suppliers to provide for an internal traceability project to be able to trace the history of the product, if necessary. Traceability, as a guarantee of transparency, is safe for the consumer and at the same time a source of opportunities for the manufacturer that can protect their products. Today traceability is a key word on the automotive scene, the answer to the growing demands of security set by the manufacturer and the tool to share responsibilities between the actors of the chain. It is also a tool for competitiveness and production rationalization systems, as well as for the enhancement of quality productions. Foreseeing important benefits to be gained from the implementation of this project, Pirelli has launched in all its production facilities a local traceability project, which impacts on the company’s overall business. More in detail, this paper concerns one of Pirelli’s factories and in particular the Carlisle plant, which is located in the county town of Cumbria in the north of the United Kingdom. Here, at the gates of the city, in the 60s a production site of the Pirelli tire Ltd. Uk (Pirelli’s parent home) was built, and now the factory counts more than 700 people and it is one of the major production sites of northern Europe. Carlisle's factory belongs to Pirelli tire Ltd UK and it is the second factory in England after Burton upon Trent’s plant, where the UK Headquarters were established when the English production was opened in the '30s. To date, only these two English plants have not completed the traceability project yet. Thanks to my thesis supervisor's willingness and to the management working in Carlisle, I was called, as an intern, to participate in one of the traceability project’s phases directly in the plant. My commitment was required from September 2013 until February 2014 when the “Ply cell” project’s phase was scheduled. This is just one single step in a project that began in 2010 and will see the possible completion before the end of 2014.

Il seguente lavoro si basa sullo stage che ho svolto presso la Sede Pirelli Gruppo di Milano ad Agosto 2013 e nello stabilimento di Carlisle (Cumbria) da Settembre 2013 a Febbraio 2014. Lo stage mi ha consentito di partecipare ad una delle fasi del progetto “PCS – Traceabilty of materials” che intende creare un nuovo processo di tracciabilità di tutti i componenti prodotti in fabbrica, fino alla creazione di una vera e propria storia del pneumatico. Il progetto intero, in cui si inserisce la fase a cui ho partecipato, prevede la creazione di un processo di tracciabilità delle informazioni di produzione dei pneumatici non esistente prima, a supporto delle attività di controllo. Oltre all’implementazione del nuovo processo di tracciabilità, il progetto ha come obiettivo la standardizzazione del processo produttivo e l’integrazione dei sistemi informativi. Di seguito sarà documentato il progetto in tutte le fasi, dando uno sguardo a cosa è successo prima di Settembre 2013 e descrivendo le attività decisionali svolte durante la mia permanenza a Carlisle.