Bridgestone reduces rate loss with Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing

Bridgestone faced challenges with scattered data across global factories, leading to inefficiencies in production. It needed a unified data solution to boost operational efficiency, reduce downtime, and enhance worker productivity.

Bridgestone implemented data solutions in Microsoft Fabric and an agent in Azure AI to unify data, enhance predictive maintenance, and empower workers with actionable insights through natural language queries.

Using Microsoft solutions, Bridgestone reduced production downtime, enhanced worker productivity, and increased operational efficiency. It expects to streamline operations, reduce waste, and optimize resource usage across factories.

Bridgestone prides itself on producing high-quality premium tires and rubber products—which is why halting production is especially frustrating. When equipment malfunctions, factory teams spend hours analyzing data from different IT/OT systems to diagnose the problem. Near real-time data expedites this process, but it is locked within siloed software applications. Additionally, benchmarking global performance is challenging because data is scattered across many geographies.

“Historically, these plants grew up on their own, using technology and data in different ways,” says Bart Kerkhofs, VP of IT, Bridgestone EMEA. “One of our challenges is to standardize and consolidate that. We want to create a base to grow further into more advanced solutions.”

Bridgestone is unifying IT/OT data to enable factory workers to use conversational AI to accelerate troubleshooting and reporting tasks. This enables manufacturers to produce superior products more quickly with less waste, driving cost and sustainability benefits.

Empowering workers with insights

Bridgestone aimed to improve overall equipment efficiency by reducing rate loss, which are disruptions that slow down production. This isn’t just about equipment failures, but production setup and adjustment delays—minor stops and slowdowns that reduce yields. Unlocking insights across Bridgestone’s global plants could transform workers’ jobs and, in turn, maximize output. With the help of Avanade, Bridgestone implemented data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, part of Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, to correlate machine downtime and loss data with machine cycle data.

“Data is key,” says Saoia Mielgo, a Shop Floor Program Manager at Bridgestone EMEA. “If you are not able to map the data correctly, the quality of the answers to the questions that factory teammates ask will not be good enough.” Collaborating with Avanade—a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft—alleviated the difficulties. “Avanade has the seniority, in terms of knowledge. It was a pleasure to work with them, even when we faced challenges,” adds Mielgo.

“It’s extremely exciting to take steps forward and build something that will be future-proofed at scale, rather than building something that may already be obsolete. With Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, we are taking those three steps forward so tomorrow we still have a future-proof architecture and the latest capabilities.”

Marina Furmanchuk, Director, IT Manufacturing Technology and Strategy, Bridgestone EMEA

With a modern unified data architecture, workers can identify, understand, and resolve issues faster. It also drives “more predictive and preventive actions to fix problems, not only reactive actions,” according to Marina Furmanchuk, Director of IT Manufacturing Technology and Strategy at Bridgestone EMEA. The agent in Azure AI empowers workers, regardless of experience, to have a conversation with their data to understand how to solve issues and optimize quality metrics.

“We’ve worked on the digitalization of our blue-collar workforce or plant operators,” explains Kerkhofs. “It requires an investment in their education as well, which then also results in an increased value of every single teammate.”

Workers aren’t the only ones learning valuable lessons with this technology. “We are still in the early stage,” notes Furmanchuk. “But it gives us a much broader view on data strategy and AI strategy that we want to drive.”

Future-proofing with advanced tech

With actionable intelligence, Bridgestone can reduce waste, streamline production, and optimize resources. It also benefits workers and customers. “We hope that it creates a more pleasant environment that has a better balance between work and life,” says Kerkhof. “We also hope that it goes directly to the safety of the environment where they operate, which is important.” As for customers, “It makes the company more competitive and allows us to put a better value proposal on the road,” says Kerkhof.

Bridgestone’s next step is to determine how and when to expand the technology to other areas. “It’s extremely exciting to take steps forward and build something that will be future-proofed at scale, rather than building something that may already be obsolete,“ says Furmanchuk. “With Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, we are taking those three steps forward so tomorrow we still have a future-proof architecture and the latest capabilities.”

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