Charles R Timmerman
Director, Service Services & Solutions Marketing
Michelin Americas Truck Tires – a division of Michelin North America (www.michelin-us.com) – designs, manufactures and sells tires for every type of vehicle, including airplanes, automobiles, bicycles, earthmovers, farm equipment, heavy duty trucks and motorcycles.The trends in maintenance technology emerging and maturing over the next five years will be focused on actionable information, such as the “smart tire” and vehicle maintenance efficiencies.
Currently, most existing technology revolves around real-time alerts for reactivity to vehicle events, such as low tire pressure, hot brakes, fault codes, recalls and scheduled preventative maintenance. It is clear that tire manufacturers, as well as telematics providers and new entrants to the market, are beginning the process of leveraging existing and forthcoming data sets for analytics and business intelligence.
Fleets are also interested in collecting tire pressure, temperature and tread depth/wear for trend analysis and possibly some elementary predictive analytics.
Some Fleet Asset Management Systems have tire modules included which provide basic features for tracking tire lifecycle data, but true analytics requires systems that are far more robust. Michelin has one such initiative as part of its digitalization effort to deliver predictive and prescriptive solutions for fleets.
RFID TAGS
Michelin is beginning to leverage RFID tags in every tire to enable complete tire lifecycle monitoring and reporting for the fleets. The tags will be embedded in commercial truck tires and can be applied to the sidewall of any tire in the aftermarket.
Additionally QR codes can be applied to the vehicle for accurate identification.
Air pressure, tread depth and inspection data are collected by a handheld device and entered into the database against the RFID. An internal management system tracks the mileage, tire position and lifecycle events from which reporting and analysis may be performed.
While the technology has been around for decades, miniaturization will increase capabilities for storing additional information within the tag. RFID readers will continue to improve their reading distance and the ability to distinguish between multiple tags.
We anticipate that the future will see fleet customers enjoying benefits such as the ability to track the complete lifecycle of each tire they purchase from Michelin. We will also be able to provide savings to the customer by pinpointing and even predicting when a tire needs to be retreaded or replaced.
