Why engineering value first is key to product and system excellence in the mobility sector

Manufacturers in the global mobility sector are under increasing pressure to deliver products that are safer, more durable and more cost-efficient amid rising energy costs, supply chain complexity and evolving regulatory expectations.

And tyres, often underestimated in strategic discussions, have a disproportionate influence on vehicle efficiency, safety, durability and total cost of ownership.

Industry discussions have tended to separate product performance from broader efficiency and environmental considerations, treating them as parallel – and sometimes competing – agendas.

However, this separation is increasingly outdated. A more durable source of competitive advantage lies in engineering better products and operating systems, where efficiency, material optimization and lifecycle thinking are embedded into design and execution from the outset.

An important strategic shift for the mobility sector is moving from transactional product sales towards lifecycle performance management. A tyre’s value is not defined solely at the point of sale, but across its full operational life.

When manufacturers, OEMs, fleets and recyclers align around total cost of ownership and performance consistency, customers benefit from higher uptime, lower replacement frequency and more predictable operating costs.

For manufacturers, this alignment supports longer-term partnerships and clearer investment signals for innovation. Efficiency and sustainability are embedded in commercial and engineering decisions from the beginning.

Achieving this shift requires more than technology investment to develop new materials, energy systems and digital tools. It depends on organizational capability and execution discipline across functions that directly shape a tyre’s real-world impact – compound development, carcass engineering, plant operations, logistics and product lifecycle management.

Many transformation efforts stall not because of limited ambition, but because teams lack shared frameworks and practical tools. Without alignment across functions, efficiency gains can remain fragmented and difficult to scale.

Like many other industries – with international manufacturing facilities, various and varied suppliers and complex supply chains – tyre companies face the common issue of large amounts of varied data with little to no standardization.

While an overarching mandate to improve efficiency and sustainability can help change the culture in any business, assistance is needed to ensure that it is effectively implemented globally.

Giti’s company-wide Real Profit framework is tailored to the realities of tyre development and manufacturing, integrating lean manufacturing, Manufacturing 4.0 tools, human-centric design thinking and lifecycle-aware engineering practices across job functions.

Training is embedded into operational roles and reinforced through applied projects, enabling concepts to be used directly in compound formulation, carcass and belt design, curing optimization, quality control, process improvement and logistics planning.

These capabilities are reinforced through applied improvement projects that link tyre performance, durability, energy efficiency and material usage in real production environments.

As a result, teams can apply lifecycle thinking directly to decisions such as material selection, tread and pattern design, process parameter tuning, scrap reduction, energy management and logistics optimization – ensuring that improvements in one area translate into measurable gains across the full tyre lifecycle, from factory to road.

By integrating efficiency and resource considerations, Giti completed 1,465 lean projects in 2024, resulting in a gain of approximately $45 million. Project teams identify opportunities to reduce waste, energy use and cost concurrently. Initiatives such as piloting autonomous electric tyre-delivery vehicles and shifting selected logistics routes from road to water have supported improvements in reliability while lowering operating expense.

Giti China’s Anhui factory, for example, launched a lean improvement project focused on reducing the thickness of tyre bladder. The project aimed to optimize heat transfer performance during the vulcanization process while ensuring effectiveness and product quality. Through a series of process optimization measures, the project not only reduced energy consumption per unit of product and equipment runtime but also decreased rubber material usage.

Following the project’s implementation, the vulcanization time for a specific tyre specification decreased from 32 minutes per batch to 29 minutes per batch. This resulted in an annual reduction of 404,990 standard m3 of natural gas consumption, 2,328 kg of rubber material input, achieved a total reduction of approximately 782 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

By doing so, this project optimized the production process through targeted optimization, leveraging the potential of existing technology without additional investment. It validated the feasibility of improving vulcanization efficiency by reducing the thickness of rubber bladder, providing replicable experience and technical pathways for similar process improvements.

Across multiple projects, these efforts have delivered reductions in energy use and emissions, alongside improvements in throughput, consistency and cost control. They also contribute to more reliable products and greater customer confidence.

Material innovation can introduce risk, including higher cost, compromised durability or inconsistent performance. Customers, however, expect improvements without trade-offs.

Giti’s R&D teams developed a prototype tyre incorporating approximately 93% sustainable materials, including renewable natural rubber, rice husk silica, pine resin, recycled rubber, recycled steel and carbon black, and recycled polyester, using advanced compounding technologies.

The design objective was explicit: to maintain safety, durability and performance benchmarks while improving material efficiency and circularity.

This work has included receiving a Platinum rating from EcoVadis, strong supplier-engagement scores from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and continued factory-level efficiency initiatives.

Its primary value lies in customer outcomes: improved rolling resistance can support better energy efficiency, enhanced durability can help reduce replacement frequency, and optimized material use can contribute to a lower lifecycle cost.

Sustainability is not a positioning statement. For vehicle manufacturers, it is reflected in lightweight design, efficient powertrains and components engineered to perform reliably over time.

In both case studies, environmental performance emerged naturally when products are designed to deliver maximum value per kilometre, not just peak specifications at launch. For tyres, this means compounds that minimize energy loss, structures that deliver consistent grip and wear, and manufacturing processes that convert materials and energy into products with minimal waste.

Integrating performance, efficiency and lifecycle thinking is a marker of resilient, future-ready industrial leadership. Companies that embed these principles into daily engineering standards, manufacturing discipline and customer-centric design are better positioned to navigate electrification, regulatory change and evolving mobility expectations.

In the tyre and automotive sectors, sustainability is therefore best understood not as an added requirement, but as evidence that the underlying system – how products are designed, made and used – is working well.