Output Will Be Focused On Scorpion Zero Performance SUV
tires

ROME, Georgia, December 20, 2004 Pirelli has
commenced the installation of a fourth production line at its U.S.
Modular Integrated Robotized System (MIRS) factory in Rome,
Georgia. Although flexible to produce both passenger car and SUV
tires, the new line will be dedicated principally to Scorpion Zero,
a testament to Pirelli’s rapidly growing business in performance
SUV tires both in the US and elsewhere.
Full production from the new line is expected in June 2005. In
fact, the 26-inch Scorpion Zero Asimmetrico recently announced at
the SEMA Show will switch from its current European production
location to the new line in Rome from that date.
With its additional capacity, the Rome factory will become the lead
source in the Pirelli Group for performance SUV products,
distinguished by the fact that all of its 4×4 output is of 22
inches in diameter or greater.
Inaugurated at the end of August 2002 and coherent with the
strategic allocation plan of Pirellis global MIRS
project, the Georgia plant currently operates three production
modules and covers a total of 440,000 square feet.

With MIRS, Pirelli has totally revolutionized traditional tire
production technology and methodology. The new process is based on
the mini-factory concept, a unit of high flexibility
to the point of being able to produce a single tire per
size which can be located in an area as dictated by the
needs of the reference market.
In a space of about 4000 square feet, the robots carry out the work
of the whole tire production cycle, at a speed without precedent in
the industry, from compounds to the finished product. They do so
without interruption of semi-manufactured components that have to
be moved and without intermediate warehousing phases. The
MIRS robots can produce one tire every three minutes.
This permits the reduction of the average time of material transit
or lead-time from the traditional processs three/six days to
the MIRS 72 minutes.

It is the absence of the warehousing stages that enables the
total tire production process to be concentrated in an extremely
limited space. That practically reduces to zero the area required
for the enormous quantities of materials and products that normally
remain in circulation during the traditional process. Under the
standard tire building system, only 12 percent of material is being
worked on at any one time, while 88 percent is stored and waiting
to enter the production cycle.
The technology of the MIRS process radically changes the
means by which a tire is made, reducing the production phases from
14 to just three.

The tire is no longer assembled in discontinuous stages, but is
built by the robots directly around a drum, which the machines pass
from mechanical hand to mechanical
hand, without stopping and without human intervention
Extruders progressively apply a strip reinforced with metal cord to
the drums with a movement of circumferential and axial deposition.
The last robot builder sends the drum with the green
tire to the vulcanizer, which is a real
merry-go-round of six molds: They turn on their own
axis with a cadence equal to the time of tire construction, and
also enable the maintenance of the process continuum in this phase.
The vulcanized tire then goes to the finishing department for the
final stage in the proceduremeticulous quality control with
the help of lasers.