How does a new product get its start? The process begins with end-users. Truck and bus tires are very different from passenger car tires. On cars, original equipment manufacturers often demand new products specifically designed for their vehicles.

With trucks and buses, the diversity of applications, equipment and operating conditions usually means tire design is driven by end-user needs, not so much for original equipment, but for replacement use.

Monitoring what end-users are saying and experiencing becomes vitally important.

How do you do that? Information comes through three worldwide technical centers, located in Akron, Ohio, Tokyo and Rome. The company’s global reach allows it to draw on real world experience of users with practically every kind of truck tire need.

Japan 1650 Engineers 3 Proving Grounds America 880 Engineers 3 Proving Grounds Europe 290 Engineers 1 Proving Ground Bridgestone Technical Centers in Tokyo, Akron, Ohio and Rome act as clearinghouses for customer input on truck tire needs.

What’s the advantage of multiple technical centers? Each area of the world has its own peculiarities. In America, for example, hauls tend to be long, roads straight and speeds high.

In Europe and Asia, traffic is much more congested and hauls are shorter. In South America, narrow, hilly roads are common, and bad roads are often the norm.

When it’s time to develop a new tire for long distance line haul, America may be the best source of experience. But if you need a new tire for urban pickup and delivery, input from Europe or Asia may be equally valuable.

What happens to all this information? Engineers look for trends. For example, given the low profit margins in trucking worldwide, long tread life and retreadability are among the most important characteristics of truck tires.

That kind of information led directly to the M726 drive radial, which began development a decade ago. Bridgestone designers saw clearly that the future lay in ultra-deep drive radials, but serious issues with heat and irregular wear would have to be confronted.

How are problems like these solved? If you just need an improvement a relatively small increase in performance you can sometimes modify existing designs. On the other hand, if you need a quantum leapin performance, it takes a fundamental understanding of the processes at work, together with breakthrough insights to get real product innovations.

Much of that work goes on at the company’s main research and development center in Japan. In the case of the M726, for example, it became clear that a slow-wearing 30/32ý deep drive tire could be a success when coupled with continuous shoulder ribs to stabilize the tread and combat irregular wear.

Where is the battleground today? It continues to be in the area of irregular wear. You can make treads wear more slowly, but it does no good if tires have to be removed prematurely for irregular wear. The development of the R227 radial, for example, led Bridgestone designers into a study of the causes of irregular wear. Their insights resulted in breakthroughs in design.

Both the rib edge sipes of the R227 and the block sipes on the M726 were modified to meet the needs of the American users.

Both the Equalizer Rib and Side Groove structures in the R227 are patented innovations in the battle against irregular wear.

What kind of breakthroughs? Both the Side Groove and Equalizer Rib structures of the R227 are patented innovations, totally new to the tire industry when they were introduced. They resulted from fundamental understandings of the mechanisms behind irregular wear.

As a result, they also resulted in huge leaps forward in tread life.

Were these tires modified for North America? Both of them were, as a result of efforts by the team at the Akron Technical Center. In certain parts of the country, primarily in the south, some of the sipes on the M726 exhibited erosion as they wore.

It wasn’t really a performance problem, but because appearance is an important part of customer satisfaction, the Akron Technical Center began experimenting with modifications that eventually minimized the erosion without diminishing wet traction. On the R227, there have been several changes, including some that actually improved its resistance to irregular wear, including a large increase in the tiny stress-relief sipes along the edges of the tire’s ribs.

Do other parts of the world do the same thing? As examples, the R227 used in Europe doesn’t have the Side Groove feature, but uses a more conventional Defense Groove design instead, better suited to their needs.

And, in Canada, where winter traction is a huge priority, they began using designs that would eventually prove very similar to the new M725 ultra-deep, open-shoulder radial at about the same time as the M726 was being introduced in America.

What happens after the new products are successful? The process of information gathering, product development and local customization is a sort of closed loop. Market competition means there will eventually be tires to compete with the R227 and M726. And, the marketplace will continue to evolve, with new needs.

So long as there are trucks carrying goods on roads, there will always be a need to improve tire performance, all over the world.

By drawing on worldwide user experience and tailoring products to serve local needs, Bridgestone technical centers will have plenty of challenges for the future.