Bridgestone Group Awards
Bridgestone Group Awards 2024

Toward our vision “a sustainable solutions company,” Bridgestone (China) Investment has strived to gain the competitive advantage in the China’s EV era where EV demand is rapidly increasing. Leveraging their strengths in strategic approach, clear direction, cross functional teamwork, and strong sense of ownership, the project team won the business from an EV leading company for the first time in Bridgestone globally. In addition, the project team succeeded in starting supply of tires 6 months earlier than originally planned. To make this happen, the green manufacturing at Wuxi Plant in China played an important role. The plant received recognition from the government and was awarded as “National Green Factory (factory that reduces environmental impact and prioritizes sustainability),” which contributed to elevating the customer trust and brand image.

REGNO GR-XIII, which is the first replacement tire in Japan equipped with ENLITEN^*1, base technology for product design positioned as the "new premium," aimed both a new level of premium customer value and social value. By pursuing to design tires of "thinner, lighter, and rounder,“ the product achieved not only the enhancement of customer value through Dan-Totsu performance with sharpened edge, but also improvement in sustainability with a higher ratio of recycled and renewable resources. Furthermore, through transformation by BCMA^*2, it also contributes to reducing business costs by improving development efficiency for child products that share the module.

1. ENLITEN is our base technology for product design, evolves environmental performance while expanding basic performance and elevating all conventional performances. It also pursues “ultimate customization” to sharpen the edge in a performance which not only meets the apparent needs and potential wants of the markets and customers, but also further inspires markets and customers by creating new value that they may not have imagined, according to the characteristics of diverse vehicles and usage conditions.
2. BCMA (Bridgestone Commonality Modularity Architecture) is our base technology for R&D and manufacturing. It consolidates tire parts into modules and shares them among different products. This streamlines the supply chain, shortens development and production lead times, and provides value to customers in an agile manner, while also aiming to reduce business costs and the environmental impact. Aligning with ENLITEN, BCMA supports “ultimate customization.”

BRIDGESTONE Aircraft Tire (EUROPE), S.A. (BAE) is a company providing premium new & retread aircraft tires and solutions to the retread aircraft tires market while operating an aircraft retread tire plant in Belgium. All BAE departments participated to transformation initiatives including promotion of safety autonomy, automation of several manufacturing processes, and consuming locally produced green electricity. These initiatives resulted in creating safer operation and higher productivity while also improving team engagement. Furthermore, BAE was externally recognized as “Factory of the Future 2024,” which is given to the advanced manufacturing companies in Belgium.

Aiming to create a workplace where everyone can work comfortably and anyone can thrive, Hikone Plant implemented improvements in the workplace environment of our production sites, from women perspective as the starting point. Improvements such as the establishment of rest spaces that take into consideration physical condition changes peculiar to women and the introduction of catchers to lift heavy loads, were realized through the voluntary and steady identification on-site of issues and proposals by female skilled workers. All these efforts have led to a shift in mindset among individuals and a cultural change throughout the workplace, contributing to stable quality management and enhancement of productivity and talent creativity. By taking the environmental changes into opportunities and amplifying value through further improvements, this initiative has become a model case for our company’s DE&I promotion, where each individual can work with vitality and contribute to the business.

In Italy, road fatalities are a serious social issue and educational activities for youth are considered the top priority. The three Bridgestone Italian Entities - sales division, Technology Center Europe, and Bari Plant - together set up a partnership with the Italian Red Cross (ITRC) to create a road safety program for youth. Events took place at schools and camps with around 30,000 participants and 2,500 combined volunteers from Bridgestone and the ITRC. The partnership with the ITRC will continue through 2026 to further amplify social value.

Reference: Corporate news ”Bridgestone wins prestigious Prince Michael International Road Safety Award for its Bridgestone Road Safety Program News | Bridgestone”

Bridgestone Americas, Inc (BSAM) has built trust and strengthened a large-scale customer relationship over a number of years with a leading last mile delivery company. By understanding customer pain points at Genbutsu-Genba and aiming to enhance the customer’s operational productivity, the team won significant new business from the company by proposing solutions that combine premium tires, tire-related maintenance services in a strategic service network, and agile digital reporting of data related to tire condition and maintenance. The success of this project is a clear proof point for Bridgestone Fleet Care (a bundled package of mobility solutions including Dan-Totsu products, maintenance services, retread, and data-driven insights) and will pave the way for expanding Bridgestone’s Commercial BtoB Solutions as a “strategic business.”

Aiming to circulate value through our entire value chain by ”produce and sell”, ”use” and “renew” the products to raw material, the plastic piping business in diversified products business have started the horizontal recycling of plastic piping for hot & cold water supply for the first time in Japan through the co-creation with Sekisui House, Japan’s top housebuilder. In pursuit of our shared vision of realizing a sustainable society, both companies are promoting co-creation toward material recycling by leveraging the strengths of each company: Bridgestone which produce and sells plastic piping made from recyclable materials while Sekisui House has a collection system for recycling. Through these initiatives, we are accelerating our efforts to make effective use of resources and the transition to a circular economy.

The mining industry is highly sensitive to global economic trends and is characterized by significant market fluctuations. In this context, the off-the-road tire business for mining vehicles has a major impact on the operational productivity of large-scale mining sites around the world. Therefore, it is crucial to produce and sell tires by responding flexibly and agilely to market fluctuation. In this initiative, the team thoroughly implemented basic behavior of working and business quality such as “PDCA^*” throughout the entire supply chain and promoted flexible responses to global tire demand forecasts and customer requirements. As a result, the team succeeded in providing values to our customers by linking the expansion of “Dan-Totsu products” and solutions.

* PDCA consists of four steps: Plan, Do, Check, and Act. By steadily implementing this cycle, we are continuously strengthening its business quality.

Bridgestone Retail Operation (BSRO) deployed 12,000 tablets with a digital inspection application and trained more than 8,000 teammates as part of a massive process challenge at all 2,200+ stores. This aggressive two-month challenge brought a significant cultural change. These efforts strengthened customer trust and increased revenue opportunities for our stores. The digital inspections program also reduces business cost by improving the efficiency of operation on-site while contributing to sustainability through paper usage reduction.