Visit a tire plant anywhere in the world, and the chance of encountering equipment manufactured by the VMI Group is very high.
The Dutch company, which began business in 1945 repairing war-damaged industrial equipment, is today easily one of the top producers of machinery for the global rubber industry. These days equipment produced for the tire industry accounts for around 80% of VMI’s global sales and the company has been a dominant force in tire building machinery since its development of the single-stage process in the 1970s.
This landmark concept brought about a revolution in production process quality, and in the years since its release VMI has repeatedly shown its strengths as an industry innovator; the latest developments from VMI, and those just around the corner, suggest the company’s tradition of innovation still remains very strong.
“We have quite a unique way of developing products,” shared VMI Group CEO Harm Voortman during an interview with Tyres & Accessories. “Unlike many other machine suppliers, who are driven by customer requests and then work under time pressure to develop new technology for an order that has already been placed, our years building up experience and relationships within the industry place us in a good position to independently develop new machinery to an advanced stage, free from these constraints. We have strong contacts and relationships with all the global players, which helps considerably when looking at the market and foreseeing what it will want in three to five years.”
A strong interaction between supplier and customer has been crucial in the development of VMI’s latest flagship line for its strongest product area, the fully automated Maxx tire building machine. “We were already the market leader for passenger car tire building machines but we decided to start all over again,” Voortman said. “Based on what we knew from 20-30 years of supplying tire-building equipment to the market we came up with a new concept. This is an example of a project where our knowledge of the market and products was such that we could do the first stage ourselves. We worked together with Nokian in Finland for the final stage; the Maxx tire builder is now a tremendous commercial success in the Western world.”
No truck tire version of the Maxx is currently built, however Voortman said, “it is very likely that in the coming years there will also be quite a dramatic development in truck tire machinery.”
The advantages offered by the Maxx tyre builder include a higher output – the Maxx can produce some 1,800 passenger tires per day (the current record is 780 tires in one shift) as opposed to the 1,200 to 1,400 maximum of the previous VMI series. However, Voortman is convinced the range, which was introduced in late 2008, offers manufacturers something far more important – consistency.
“Our customers don’t share quality figures with us, but we have found out that the difference in tire uniformity between the best available non-VMI products and real VMI technology is at least 10% or maybe 20%. This is a vital difference if you are an OE supplier; if you are able to work very consistently at OE quality level you can charge more for your tires.”
The Dutch manufacturer opines that the key to improved tire uniformity lies in automating as much of the tire building process as possible. “At VMI we definitely believe that our customers, the tire producers, should minimize, or even take out completely, the influence of operators on product quality and output,” Voortman commented. “If you have a factory, you need a lot of people to run the factory but you don’t want people to influence quality and output factors. People building tires themselves should be history. That is our philosophy, and everything we do in R&D is working towards flexibility and full automation.”
To remain the global market leader in the tire building machinery sector – Voortman reported that VMI holds somewhere between 60% and 70% of the open market for these products – the company has constantly needed to move ahead with the latest technologies. The CEO commented that tire building machinery requires flexible but very precise equipment and that a great deal of high-tech equipment, such as camera systems, high-speed checking devices, servo motors and linear motors, go into a modern tire building machine.
“Some customers don’t want full automatic,” Voortman observed. “It is my strong belief that, even in countries where labor costs are low, it is still advantageous to remove operator influence in the interest of product constancy. But there are two reasons why people hesitate to adopt full automation. One is the cost; you need to buy robotics, and this has its price.
“Emerging markets now account for over 50% of our business,” Voortman continued. “We supply more machines in Asia than in the west, but the machines are less expensive. Asia is an important growth market for us. We are seeing a shift; the big Western players are setting up in Asia and they acknowledge that labour costs are less there, so their first impression is to go for less automation. But they still want a reliable supplier they are used to. VMI assures them a certain level of quality.”
The other main reason some tire makers decide against fully automated tyre builders is that a fully automated line requires high-quality components at every stage. Automated component handling requires consistent high quality and any variations caused by upstream equipment cannot be compensated for without stopping machinery and losing production time.
“This is the main driver for certain customers in certain regions to still want operators in front of the machine who can correct certain splices and the like. A person is always very flexible – he sees, and he can correct,” said Voortman. To cater for this market, VMI offers a range of tire builders intended for use with an operator; these machines are partially based on previous VMI products yet have been incrementally updated in order to stay ahead of the competition. (Tyres & Accessories)
