Innovation is the key to long-term success for any industrial business, and for the countries where they operate. In this article, Mike Norman, CCO at VMI Holland, explains why protecting IP is a key priority. VMI Group, based in the Netherlands, with operations around the world, is an international leader for tyre building machines.

Long live innovation!

VMI is 75 years old, and no manufacturer stays successful for so many years without a serious commitment to innovation. In the past 20 years, VMI has rewritten the book on automated tyre building. We have done that by creating manufacturing platforms capable of constant evolution, and then adding new innovations and improvements, year by year.

VMI has built a lot of trust in the market as a result of this strategy. Our customers know we invest more than any other comparable business in original R&D, and we make sure that every new idea leads to practical benefit for them.

Our business is built upon our Intellectual Property: our IP. It is what enables us to help customers face their own challenges. We are proud of the innovations we create - and we will protect our IP and our customers’ interests, anywhere, anytime.

Innovation and collaboration

In our experience, innovators like working together. It is exciting and it is a creative experience. You help each other. You get to move, develop and grow faster. You listen to each other, learn from each other and make progress faster as a result.

In the world of tyre development, we know exactly what we bring to the market, and we also know the areas that belong exclusively to our customers. Our products and solutions help make manufacturing processes more efficient, precise, controlled, more easily managed and fully auditable. That is our area, and that is where our IP is focused.

Our customers define the materials, the compounds, their operational characteristics, the different tire constructions and do so by knowing how all of this connects to the expectations and requirements of the automotive industry. That is their territory and we recognise that.

Put their IP and ours together, however, and something exciting happens. The individual tyre manufacturers remain as different and distinctive as ever, but the tyre build process becomes faster, more flexible and efficient, the number of variants available grows and quality standards rise.  

In other words, our ability to innovate helps tyre manufacturers become the best they can be, and also helps them unlock maximum benefit from their own innovations. That is why tyre companies with strong IP of their own are drawn to VMI, because they know we add value to their business, while always maintaining confidentiality.

Why protecting IP matters

Innovation is the fuel that drives business success, and the fastest way to undermine a successful business is to steal and copy its IP. That discourages further investment, while taking away the profits needed for the future.

It also slows down progress for us all. If you cannot defend your own creativity and original thinking, then fewer innovations take place and fewer good ideas are available for customers to use. In the tyre industry, this means that good companies, which want to use the best equipment to achieve the highest quality results for themselves, will lose out.

What is the point in buying the most advanced technology if your less honest, less scrupulous competitor can buy a cheap copy and undercut you on price? And what if you are tempted to buy a cheap copy of the market-leading machine, yourself, just to cut costs? And then find it is not as good as its makers told you? After all, copyists sometimes do not understand what they are copying, which adds serious risk when you buy that kind of machine. It also means that its makers simply cannot give you the service support you need- because they do not know how!

Worse, what happens when the machines bought from a copyist turn out to have stolen IP in their design? And the courts order them to be seized without compensation?

But maybe the most important argument of all for defending other people’s IP is simple self-interest. What would any of us do if our own ideas and innovations are stolen, copied and used against us? We are all part of the same marketplace. We cannot defend our own IP and yet be careless about other people’s. We need to protect innovation and IP completely, end-to-end across the entire industry and in all countries. That is the only way to protect ourselves, as well.

Innovation within the Indian marketplace

So why does a discussion of IP matter to India, in particular? We think Indian manufacturing is at an important stage of development. Despite the problems caused by Covid-19, we see every sign that India will be going through a period of rapid manufacturing growth in the next decade. We expect to see Indian companies, in automotive and related industries, taking a higher proportion of the domestic market and building share overseas, as well.

We have seen this happen in other sectors, after all: in IT, service markets, telecom and pharmaceuticals. Now Indian companies are stepping-up to the challenge in automotive and other sectors, too. Foreign companies operating in the Indian market need to be clear about the contribution they can make. At VMI, we understand what is needed. We will bring the best IP in the world for tyre building, and will work with ambitious, innovative Indian companies to help them develop a global presence. To make that happen, we need to know that the law protects ours- and everyone else’s- IP.

We spoke to Chetan Chadha, a leading IP attorney in Gurgaon, and his view was clear. “The Indian Courts,” he tells us, “have a strong track record of enforcing Intellectual Property Rights, acting to protect patent holders against infringements both by foreign and local Indian offenders.” He cites the example of a series of patent infringement litigations in the telecommunications sector in 2013 and 2014.

“These were a series of high-profile Standard Essential Patent (SEP) litigations,” he recalls, “in which several companies, including companies of Indian and Chinese origin, were sued for infringement of 8 patents, and interim injunction was granted in favour of the Patentee, irrespective of the origin of the allegedly infringing companies. Eventually, damages and injunctions were granted against infringing companies alike, without any bias.”

This legal example set a clear precedent that India has utmost respect for Intellectual Property Rights and will strictly enforce patents in order to protect the integrity of the market and maintain confidence.

VMI has been filing patents in India since 2005 and we expect our presence to deepen and grow in the near future. India’s proud record of defending IP is one of the main reasons why we, along with so many other European companies, are eager to work and trade here.

In this, our 75^th anniversary year, let’s celebrate the potential for a prosperous and profitable future together, working together as innovators in a spirit of mutual respect.

ENDS

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As commercial vehicle operators face mounting pressure from regulations, rising costs and the shift to electric power, Webfleet, a subsidiary of Bridgestone, is focusing on turning ever-growing volumes of vehicle data into practical recommendations that improve performance and ease the daily burden on fleet managers.

Founded in Leipzig in 1999 as one of the world’s first web-based fleet management platforms, Webfleet has grown from a pioneering software-as-a-service (SaaS) start-up to Europe’s leading solution and a core part of Bridgestone’s global offering. Today it serves drivers across more than 180 countries with AI-powered insights, electric-vehicle tools and sustainability data that turn complex operations into clearer, more efficient decisions.

In an exclusive interaction with Tyre Trends, Marc Notenboom, Director of Product Management at Webfleet, shares how the company has watched the fleet-management sector evolve over more than a quarter of a century. Interestingly, it was just last year the company marked its 25th anniversary.

From its inception, Webfleet has seen the volume of available data explode, yet the real challenge remains converting that information into meaningful guidance.

“Fleets give you more data but not more insights, which continues to be a challenge. Because of new regulations, new sensors, increasing competition and customer demands, we end up generating more data. We also have access to more data, which is growing exponentially. And then comes the real question, how do you make sense of that data?” Notenboom observed.

Marc Notenboom, Director of Product Management, Webfleet

Webfleet obtains its information through black-box devices installed in vehicles, sensors or direct connections to original-equipment manufacturers. This includes telematics, GPS, video, driver behaviour and vehicle diagnostics, among others. The company then processes that stream to deliver fleet-management services.

The next step, he explained, is moving beyond retrospective analysis. “Insights tell you what happened and why it happened, perhaps, but not what you need to do to improve your performance. That is what we are doing now with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). For example, we analyse data, see if patterns are different or you have anomalies in your data to predict what is happening or what is going wrong. And then we also use AI to analyse our data to see how you are performing, for instance, against competition. And then give customers suggestions on how to improve on certain topics like fuel consumption or driver safety,” he said.

The industry, in Webfleet’s view, is therefore evolving from raw data collection towards insights, recommendations and concrete actions.

SHARED PRESSURES ACROSS DIVERSE FLEETS

Webfleet serves a wide spectrum of customers, from large transport and logistics operators to small fleets of one or two vehicles, service-and-maintenance businesses and last-mile delivery companies.

Each customer faces distinct operational issues, yet common themes emerge. “What they all have in common is that the amount of data and the pressure to enhance their performance is increasing a lot. And then there is the regulatory compliance pressures as well,” said Notenboom.

Performance, in this context, covers delivery times, cost per kilometre, driver wages, safety and fuel consumption – metrics that matter differently according to the sector, but all that demand continuous improvement.

One of Europe’s most persistent difficulties is the shortage of skilled drivers, which has led to greater reliance on migrant workers whose experience of road conditions may vary widely between countries.

Webfleet addresses part of this challenge through tools such as OptiDrive, which shows fleet managers how individual drivers perform on fuel use and safety. Language barriers are tackled with automatic translation features built into the driver’s work app or tablet.

“They can interact with their fleet manager in their own language, and the fleet manager can also interact back in their own language,” explained Notenboom. The same interface delivers active coaching: if a driver exceeds the speed limit, for example, an immediate warning appears. These software-based interventions help maintain standards without requiring constant direct supervision.

MEASURABLE GAINS AND EV TRANSITION

Notenboom agrees that customers understandably scrutinise the return on any additional technology cost. He reported that Webfleet users typically achieve efficiency improvements of up to 15 percent, though results depend heavily on the starting point. This ranges from fuel savings, faster turnaround, downtime reduction or improved driver behaviour, among others.

“If a company is already really good at saving fuel, then adding tools and driver coaching and technology might not change a lot. At the same time, even if it’s a small improvement, especially with the high fuel prices today, it could already translate to a lot of savings,” averred Notenboom.

The arrival of electric trucks introduces a fresh set of complexities. Research indicates that driver behaviour exerts an even greater influence on energy consumption in electric vehicles than in conventional combustion models. Smooth operation becomes critical to range, while decisions about when and where to charge add further layers of planning. Webfleet supports the transition by helping managers determine the right vehicle for each duty cycle.

“If you do long-distance transport, electric trucks are perhaps not the best option. But if you do inner-city deliveries, then electric trucks become an interesting option. And trying to find out where the optimum is, when to use Internal Combustion Engine-vehicles, where to use electric vehicles, that is also a part where we can help the fleet manager to make that decision,” he said.

On the technology package itself, every Webfleet customer receives the software platform. Hardware can be selected according to need, or in some cases, dispensed with entirely through the OEM.connect service (access vehicle data directly from OEMs via APIs), without installing extra hardware that draws data directly from the vehicle manufacturer.

“A number of customers are preferring to use OEM.connect. So that is a solution where we don’t install hardware but take the data directly from the OEM offerings,” he explained. On the other hand, where original-equipment data fall short, Webfleet’s own devices remain available.

PRIVACY, BENCHMARKING AND THE ROAD AHEAD

Growing data volumes inevitably raise questions of privacy and regulatory compliance. Webfleet adheres strictly to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – a strict European Union (EU) law that protects information privacy and data rights for individuals in the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA) – requirements.

Certain categories of information can be processed only with explicit customer permission, and for benchmarking purposes, the company anonymises data so that individual vehicles or fleets cannot be identified.

A recent example is Webfleet’s Commercial Trip Monitor, which aggregates anonymised information across the entire customer base to generate comparative insights.

Looking three to five years ahead, Notenboom identified three principal challenges for the commercial-vehicle industry: the practical difficulties of electrification, the continuing shortage of drivers (with autonomous vehicles potentially addressing certain use cases over a longer horizon) and relentless competitive pressure to deliver higher quality service at lower cost.

He regards these same pressures as sources of opportunity for those able to convert them into advantage.

Interestingly, he shared that Webfleet itself continues to evaluate new markets beyond its established presence in Europe, South Africa, South America and Australia. Bridgestone’s ownership of the US-focused Azuga platform complements the portfolio, while Asia-Pacific, including India, remains under active review even if no immediate plans have been confirmed.

As Notenboom puts it, the goal is not to simply collect more information but to translate that information into clearer decisions that keep vehicles productive, drivers safer and costs under control – regardless of whether the powertrain is diesel or electric.

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Vaculug has released VMS Pro Max, the next generation of its fleet management application. The product, developed over a three-year period, pairs a redesigned interface with AI-enhanced software intended to make commercial fleet management faster and more intelligent. The app is now available for download through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

The upgraded platform offers clear, real-time access to tyre and vehicle data, accelerates background report uploads to reduce driver time and allows measuring tools to be connected for automatic tread depth capture. It also incorporates an embedded VAN Driver Guide and can instantly flag vehicles left uninspected across 30, 60 or 90 days. Existing users must sync all pending inspections and confirm cloud upload before updating to prevent data loss.

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The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd. and dotData, Inc. have announced joint development an AI agent to help engineers form hypotheses, interpret findings and make decisions in manufacturing R&D. Before full deployment, the initiative will validate the agent's required capabilities and technical feasibility.

The solution combines technical documents such as design specifications and experimental reports with engineers' accumulated expertise and features extracted from measurement data via dotData's Signal Intelligence technology. It will provide insights tailored to each project's objectives, circumstances and constraints.

The agent is not meant to produce a single correct answer. Operating in a human-in-the-loop framework where engineers retain decision-making authority, it will present multiple possibilities, perspectives and risks to broaden thinking and support professional development.

Manufacturing R&D generates diverse data through experiments, simulations, production and evaluation. Developing hypotheses requires specialised knowledge and context. Since new technology R&D rarely has one predetermined answer, abductive reasoning plays a key role. AI can add value by using data and organisational knowledge to widen engineers' perspectives rather than replace judgment.

The agent will explore measurement and experimental data patterns beyond factors engineers previously identified, combining quantitative insights with design documents and expert knowledge to reveal difficult-to-spot relationships. It will offer input from materials, design, analysis, production and evaluation perspectives, challenge existing hypotheses and raise questions about alternative interpretations and conditions. Engineers will then test hypotheses and feed results back into further dialogue, guiding Signal Intelligence processes so non-specialists can explore data features as needed.

Yokohama Rubber has advanced HAICoLab since 2020, using dotData as a foundational technology in tyre design and rubber mixing. This joint development expands those efforts, with engineers interpreting and evaluating the agent's suggestions using their own expertise rather than accepting them unquestioningly. The companies aim to transform R&D processes while strengthening engineers' creativity and judgment, establishing a new model for human-AI collaboration in manufacturing R&D.

Motoji Fujita, Head of Research & Advanced Development Division, The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., said, “Since 2020, we have conducted research and development under the HAICoLab framework, drawing on the complementary strengths of people and AI to create a collaborative environment. We believe AI agents will give engineers access to perspectives beyond their own experience and enable them to evaluate hypotheses from multiple angles. Through this development initiative, we aim to advance our R&D capabilities while supporting the continued growth of our engineers.”

Ryohei Fujimaki, CEO, dotData, Inc., said, “Success in manufacturing R&D depends heavily on an organisation’s ability to connect its proprietary data and knowledge with AI. The quantitative context generated from data through automated Signal Intelligence provides a foundation for AI agents to engage engineers in practical, data-driven discussions. Together with Yokohama Rubber, which has many years of experience in advanced data utilisation, we intend to establish standards for using AI in highly specialised business domains.”

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Bridgestone Aircraft Tire (Europe), a Bridgestone Corporation subsidiary, has announced the deployment of its ‘easytrack’ tyre management system at SR Technics Spain SAU, the tyre and wheel maintenance hub of global maintenance, repair & overhaul (MRO) provider SR Technics. The scalable digital platform is accessible on desktop and mobile devices.

Designed for airlines and MROs, ‘easytrack’ manages inbound and outbound tyre and wheel flows across single- or multi-site operations. It delivers real-time identification, tracking and documentation throughout each asset’s lifecycle. The project follows the solution’s first airline implementation in 2025, becoming its second customer rollout and first MRO application.

MRO providers handle large tyre and wheel volumes for multiple airlines, complicating operations. ‘easytrack’ simplifies asset management and improves traceability, accuracy, safety and productivity. At SR Technics Spain SAU, it digitalised paper-based processes, cutting processing time by 45 percent, reducing data-entry and identification errors and improving flow management across Palma de Mallorca and Madrid.

From left: David Sautois, ‘easytrack’ Product Manager, Bridgestone Aircraft Tire (Europe) S.A.; Antonio Colella, General Manager, SR Technics Spain SAU; Jean-Philippe Minet, Managing Director, Bridgestone Aircraft Tire (Europe) S.A.; Eugenie Baradzina, Commercial Director, SR Technics Spain SAU.

The results stem from a Bridgestone and SR Technics Spain SAU co-creation initiative built on long-standing partnership. ‘easytrack’ was adapted to support tyre and wheel combinations for the hub’s wheel and brake operations. Bridgestone’s expansion of airline and MRO solutions aligns with its E8 Commitment, emphasising efficiency and ecology.

Antonio Colella, General Manager, SR Technics Spain SAU, said, "The successful implementation of easytrack is a significant achievement for SR Technics Spain SAU and our teams in Mallorca and Madrid. From the very beginning, the collaboration with Bridgestone was built on trust, openness and a shared vision for innovation. Together, we have developed a solution that not only improves efficiency and traceability but also creates lasting value for our operations. We are proud to be the first MRO in the world to adopt this technology and look forward to continuing this journey with Bridgestone Corporation.”

Jean-Philippe Minet, Managing Director, Bridgestone Aircraft Tire Europe, said, “I’d like to thank SR Technics for their trust and another fruitful collaboration with Bridgestone. What the teams have jointly achieved is remarkable: co-creating through efficient teamwork and customising the Bridgestone easytrack application to digitise SR Technics tyre and wheel tracking operations. This is a brilliant example of how Bridgestone amplifies the value created at our partners.”

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