Tire Industry Digital Transformation
Driven by the digital wave, the tire industry's digital transformation is accelerating. In December 2025, several tire companies announced increased investment in digitalization to improve operational efficiency and customer experience.
For example, Pirelli announced a €500 million investment in digital transformation to upgrade smart manufacturing and smart logistics. Furthermore, many companies are actively deploying cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data to achieve intelligent and personalized tire products.
Behind this wave of transformation is the tire industry's urgent need to address traditional pain points and the intensification of market competition. As a major tire producer and consumer, my country has long faced challenges in traditional tire manufacturing, including outdated design and development models, long product delivery cycles, untimely after-sales response, and lengthy and inefficient supply chains.
Some companies have even suffered from tens of millions of yuan worth of expired inventory due to uncontrolled inventory management, or lost a large number of core customers due to chaotic channel pricing.
As global manufacturing shifts towards high-end and intelligent manufacturing, consumers' demands for tire safety performance, adaptability to various scenarios, and personalization are constantly increasing. Digitalization has become an inevitable choice for companies to break through development bottlenecks and build core competitiveness.
In the field of intelligent manufacturing, leading companies are setting benchmarks. Domestic enterprises are focusing on building "lights-out factories" and "smart factories," improving overall process efficiency through the integration of digital twins, AI algorithms, and industrial equipment. For example, Jiangsu General Technology built a 5G private network to create a fully automated "lights-out workshop," significantly reducing costs and increasing efficiency; its three all-steel plants have become industry models.
Shandong Huasheng Rubber's smart workshop, leveraging equipment linkage and an MES system, doubled production efficiency and improved pass rates, earning it a provincial-level smart factory designation. Pirelli's €500 million investment is primarily focused on upgrading such production lines, optimizing process parameters to improve product consistency and efficiency.
The deep application of the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data is driving tire products from "passive use" to "proactive service." Enterprises are using built-in smart sensors in tires, combined with IoT to monitor key indicators such as tire temperature and pressure in real time, and leveraging big data to build lifespan prediction models for early warning of risks.
Industry leader Zhongce Rubber, in collaboration with Alibaba Cloud, has created a tire data brain, integrating data across the entire supply chain through a self-developed system, resulting in a cumulative reduction of 129 vehicle fires, a more than 90% reduction in on-the-road accidents, and a 50% improvement in rescue efficiency. Intelligent upgrades not only improve driving safety but also give rise to a new "smart tire + mileage leasing" model, enhancing user satisfaction.
Simultaneously, by recycling and reprocessing tire data, R&D resources are accumulated, contributing to green emission reduction and forming a new green circular paradigm for R&D, production, sales, and service.
The digital reconstruction of the supply chain and marketing has also become a key focus of transformation. Addressing issues such as information gaps and slow inventory turnover caused by the traditional six-tier distribution system, companies are building "smart supply chain + ecosystem collaboration" platforms, using ERP as the data hub to connect the entire chain of procurement, production, warehousing, and sales.
After a distributor in Shandong connected to such a platform, the proportion of cross-provincial transfer orders decreased from 30% to 8%, saving 220,000 yuan in logistics costs annually. By establishing a batch full lifecycle tracking system, automatic warnings and promotions are issued as the warranty period approaches, resulting in an 18% decrease in tire wear rate.
On the marketing side, companies like Guizhou Tire are collaborating with platforms to create a three-in-one ecosystem of "channel + data + service," using new media methods such as short video seeding and live streaming conversion to build a closed loop of "online exposure - offline conversion," precisely driving traffic to terminal stores and promoting the industry's transformation from traditional distribution to ecosystem co-operation.
A robust technological support system provides a solid guarantee for transformation. AI technology enables a "triple leap" in R&D, production, and safety management: Zhongce Rubber uses an industrial brain to shorten R&D cycles and reduce testing costs, Huasheng Rubber replaces manual labor with visual recognition for full inspection, reducing defect rates, AI algorithms can also provide 24-hour early warning of factory risks. 5G technology solves data transmission latency issues.
The intelligent production system developed by Shandong Mobile in cooperation with Huasheng Rubber uses sensors to capture data in real time and automatically schedule production, improving accuracy and efficiency.
In terms of policy, Shandong issued a relevant action plan in October 2024 to promote enterprises to build industrial internet platforms and promote information technology, aiming to achieve a digital transformation coverage rate of over 98% in the industry by 2027, cultivate approximately 20 national and provincial-level smart factories, and create a favorable environment for transformation.
The digital transformation of the tire industry is not only an efficiency revolution for individual enterprises, but also a reshaping of the entire industry's value chain. From R&D and production to the supply chain and services, the integrated utilization of data elements is breaking down traditional barriers, driving the industry from "experience-driven" to "data-driven."
