How Bridgestone Leverages XR Technology to Drive Innovation in Manufacturing

Bridgestone is the world’s largest tire manufacturer, developing products for commercial vehicles, cars, trucks, motorcycles, and much more. It has also leveraged its rubber production capabilities into the manufacture of a number of other products, including conveyor belts, hydraulic hoses, and even golf equipment.

As a company with nearly 100 years of experience in the field, Bridgestone understands the need to constantly iterate on processes and adopt new technologies to stay ahead of the competition.

To do so, it’s constantly looking for ways to make production more efficient, to make training and onboarding more effective, and to reduce the friction between the initial design of its products and their eventual manufacturing plants and installation onto cars all over the world.

Bridgestone has also publicly stated its goal of achieving a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 .

For Bridgestone, extended reality (XR) technology holds the key to meeting all of these challenges.

The Challenge

“We build the machines that build the tires,” said Andy Warren, Senior Manager of Engineering Services Support at Bridgestone Americas. “A lot of robots, a lot of automation.”

Developing the machines that produce Bridgestone’s award-winning products requires navigating numerous obstacles.

Each manufacturing plant must be designed to maximize throughput while meeting each country’s safety and labor regulations. Any mistakes in a plant’s final layout would mean reduced assembly line efficiency or an increase in the likelihood of employee injury. It would also mean having to make updates to live chains of production, leading to costly downtime.

Warren knew there was a better way to get the plant design right the first time, while also allowing employees to train before Bridgestone installed a single machine.

“We needed something to make design review more efficient,” said Warren. “The machines that make Bridgestone tires are giant and cost a lot of money to build. It’s really easy to overlook things, even with the automated tools we use in our 3D modeling software. Our original goal was to be able to walk through these machines and catch any issues before we build them.”

Warren needed a product that would allow his team to create a virtual representation of the factory and make tweaks after gathering feedback. Many of the machines and systems required to build high-quality tires are large — some over five stories tall — so he needed hardware that could push a significant amount of polygons while being lightweight and intuitive enough to use so non-technically-minded people could make meaningful input. Plus, essential engineers needed to be able to collaborate on factory designs without making expensive and time-consuming trips halfway across the world, taking them away from important work to be done elsewhere.

The Solution

Warren examined many XR hardware systems in his search for the most effective method to achieve his goals. Ultimately, he landed on HTC VIVE as the solution that ticked all of the necessary boxes.

Leveraging VIVE’s best-in-class tracking and immersion technology, Warren could take 3D models and put them in an interactive space. Warren could then put factory employees into the virtual environment to see exactly how his team’s designs would fare under actual working conditions, gathering essential telemetry and making adjustments on the fly.

“We took VIVE down to one of our factories in Mexico,” Warren explained. “An operator put the headset on and started working on one of the machines in the environment. He pointed to his forehead, and one of the other operators translated for him, ‘He’s hitting his head right here. Can we move this conveyor over about a foot?’ This was the ninth machine like this that we’d built, and it was the first time anyone had told us about it, thanks to the data we got from using VIVE hardware. It cost us nothing to fix since we caught it in the virtual space before we built the physical machine in the factory.”

HTC VIVE’s XR headsets seamlessly integrate with VIVERSE for Business, a virtual collaboration space that offers high-level Bridgestone engineers the ability to perform design walkthroughs or offer feedback no matter where they are in the world, without spending time or money on unnecessary travel. It also reduced operational downtime and offered alternative avenues for design review during disruptive events like the COVID-19 pandemic.

HTC VIVE XR technology also allows new Bridgestone employees to practice in a safe, virtual environment on machines that look and act just like their real-life counterparts.

“The past three years, we’ve gotten really big into using XR in training,” Warren said. “We’re training people with HTC VIVE in a conference room before they go out onto the floor and get into a dangerous situation.”

Warren also chose HTC VIVE for its enterprise-level approach to data security while offering integration with Bridgestone’s crucial single sign-on (SSO) and mobile device management (MDM) systems.

“A big benefit of using VIVE is its reliability across the board — supply, technical support, and hardware,” said Warren. “It integrates easily with our IT systems, including SSO and MDM, making it easy to manage user access and ensure our data remains secure and operations run smoothly.”

Results

The ability to test virtual machine designs has been a game changer for Bridgestone’s ability to integrate feedback into the design process. This allows Bridgestone to provide real-world results without spending money on costly production samples, modifications, or hardware revisions. Plus, the need to build fewer physical iterations allows Bridgestone to make good on its critical sustainability promises.

“Every time we’ve used HTC VIVE for design review, we’ve saved at least $20,000 to $35,000,” said Warren. “VIVE is a key product for us.”

In addition to the financial benefits, HTC VIVE gives Bridgestone’s employees the training they need to work with dangerous and highly technical machinery with confidence. After rigorous XR training builds the necessary muscle memory, they can step into live production at higher success rates while reducing scrap waste and preventing injury.

Warren sees XR as an essential component in the future of manufacturing and relies on HTC VIVE to power Bridgestone’s continued advancements in factory operations.

“We continue to choose VIVE because of their reliability, scalability, and strong support,” Warren said. “Their high-quality hardware ensures consistent performance, and their solutions are scalable, making it easy to expand our XR deployments. Plus, their robust support infrastructure helps keep our systems running smoothly.”