Goodyear Canada--new life for North Bay plant.A worldwide shortage of rubber tires for off-the-road (OTR OTR Over The Road (truckers)OTR Other OTR Old Time Radio OTR On The Road OTR Off the Record OTR Outer OTR Over The Rainbow OTR Office of Tax and Revenue OTR Over-The-Rhine ) vehicles spells good news and bright long-term prospects for a North Bay retreading plant. By this October, Goodyear Canada officials hope to be cutting the ribbon on a new facility now under construction in a south-end industrial park. The tire making giant is expanding its shop by moving it across town into a new and larger 80,000-square-foot space. The company has been a fixture on Gormanville Road for 21 years, but it has outgrown its 50,000-square-foot shop because of the global and Canadian demand for tires, especially from the mining industry. The $8.5 million investment means security for its 50 North Bay employees over the next 15 years. That's the length of the lease Goodyear Canada signed with CIR (Committed Information Rate) In a frame relay network, the average transmission rate in bits per second (typically Kbps) for a virtual circuit. It defines the maximum rate that the network can handle under normal conditions. General Contracting, the builder of the facility on a 19-acre property. The North Bay plant, Goodyear's only such Canadian facility, retreads a wide range of tires for the construction, mining, forestry and recycling industries. "We do tires up to 8,000 pounds," says North Bay business centre manager Glenn Bennett. "It could be 130 inches in diametre down to 40 inches." Tire makers are scrambling to make new OTR tires, so using retreaded tires has become vital and economical for some companies. Not only are there big road construction projects in the North, Bennett says there's "unbelievable business" over the last three years from the mining industry. The new plant will employ Lean manufacturing Lean manufacturing is the production of goods using less of everything compared to mass production: less human effort, less manufacturing space, less investment in tools, and less engineering time to develop a new product. principles, which includes minimal tolerance for waste. This creates a strong demand for improved performance and continuous flow of production. In the existing shop, Bennett says machines were installed wherever there was space and inventory was piling up between work stations. The new layout will avoid a lot of wasted movement and production should increase by 20 per cent using the same number of people. "It's a lateral move across town for more production space with lots of room for expansion," says Bennett, but nothing definite is in the works. "We've just outgrown the facility." Retreaded tires can run close to, or sometimes better, in performance than new tires, and at only 65 per cent of the tire cost, says Gary Blake, Goodyear's Lean Six Sigma Lean Six Sigma is a business improvement methodology which combines (as the name implies) tools from both Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma. Lean manufacturing focuses on speed and traditional Six Sigma focuses on quality. By combining the two, the result is better quality faster. Champion, who is overseeing the North Bay expansion project. He says there's a tremendous amount of engineering and material invested in a tire's casing. If it hasn't been wrecked, a user can get two or three more lives out of it by putting a new tread on. This is more environmentally friendly Environmentally friendly, also referred to as nature friendly, is a term used to refer to goods and services considered to inflict minimal harm on the environment.[1] and in North Bay's case, it keeps about 8,000 to 10,000 tires annually out of landfills. "Every tire we can retread re·tread tr.v. re·tread·ed, re·tread·ing, re·treads 1. To fit (a worn automotive tire) with a new tread. 2. keeps a vehicle running in this worldwide shortage," says Blake. The company ships tires to more than 200 selected dealers across Canada Across Canada was an afternoon program that formerly aired on The Weather Network. The segment ran from early 1999 until mid 2002. The show ran from 3:00PM ET until 7:00 PM ET. , who sell them to the big miners, southern Ontario contractors, steel makers and waste management firms. In Northern Ontario Northern Ontario is the part of the province of Ontario which lies north of Lake Huron (including Georgian Bay), the French River and Lake Nipissing. Northern Ontario has a land area of 802,000 km² (310,000 mi²) and constitutes 87% of the land area of Ontario, although it , Royal Tire is their distributor serving many of the major mining companies. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Some tires are shipped west, but only for companies in support roles for the oil sands production. No tire manufacturers are retreading the big tires for the large earthmoving equipment and dump trucks. Tire retreading is not a huge portion of Goodyear's overall business, but there's always growth opportunities on the horizon. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the Tire Retreading Information Bureau, 18.6 million retreaded tires were sold in North America North America, third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. in 2006 with more than $3 billion in sales. The possibility of shipping internationally is being studied, but Goodyear has not firmed up any commitments yet. "Right now there's more business locally than we can keep up with," says Blake. www.goodyear.ca QUICK FACTS Goodyear Canada--North Bay Plant manager: Glenn Bennett Number of employees: 50 What they do: Retread tires What they're up to: Expanding into a new 80,000-sq.ft. shop. By IAN ROSS Northern Ontario Business Northern Ontario Business is a Canadian magazine, which publishes monthly in Greater Sudbury, Ontario. The magazine covers business news and issues in Northern Ontario. |
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