Tyre manufacturer Nokian Tyres’ heavy investment into research and development (R&D) such as the R&D Centre in Nokia, Finland, has led to considerable improvement in operations involving testing of products.
“Thanks to the added capacity, the earlier bottlenecks in tyre testing have been eliminated,” said R&D Director Kalle Kaivonen, Nokian Tyres. “For example, the drum testing capacity grew significantly, the product development and OEM collaboration are much more efficient, and still there is plenty of room for future investments.”
Kaivonen pointed out that the new machinery at manufacturing facilities’ enables better gathering of data as well as analysis and integration with product development. The entire testing process for tyres has been optimised to provide quality data which efficiently helps in acquiring different information as per the manufacturer’s needs.
“Different kinds of tests and analysis can be ordered by a product development team, customer service or by a machine manufacturer; we can provide them with an extremely broad range of different analysis and in-depth information.”
“On rare occasions there can be a tyre failure, abnormal noise or some such problem in the field that needs to be thoroughly figured out,” noted Mikko Pukkila, technical customer service department, Nokian Tyres. “In these cases, tyres can be inspected and analysed in the R&D facilities/test centres and the feedback from the field gives us important understanding of the tyre lifecycle.”
According to the manufacturer, special attention was provided to the safe, comfortable and efficient handling of the tyres and wheels throughout R&D, while tyre testing facilities ensure manufacturing quality and customer service.