Goodyear rolls suppliers back into product development
Supplier innovation day brings some surprising benefits
Dave Hannon -- Purchasing, 10/9/2009 1:50:36 PM
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When Mark Purtilar took over as CPO at Goodyear Tire & Rubber two years ago, one of the C-level executives he built a quick relationship with was Jean-Claude Kihn, the tiremaker's new CTO. After even just a few conversations, it was clear the two men were of the same mind when it came to suppliers.
"We both saw that we have a lot of suppliers with a high level of technical knowledge in their respective areas, and so why shouldn't we include them more in the process and increase our R&D capability?" Purtilar tells Purchasing.com in a recent interview.
Coming to that realization was the first step, but actually getting suppliers more integrated in the product development process would be where the rubber meets the road for Goodyear's supply chain. The first part of that journey was to painstakingly map out the product development process at Goodyear and determine at which point each stakeholder is brought into the process and identify where in the flow suppliers should be included.
Suppliers' day in the sun
After months of process mapping, a list of select suppliers was invited to an Innovation Day at Goodyear's headquarters in Akron, Ohio to introduce the concept. "We had a few dozen suppliers here, but not hundreds," says Purtilar. "We literally sat down with our entire supplier list in one hand and our challenges list in the other and compared them to decide which suppliers would be the most useful."
Among the suppliers present were DuPont, Sumitomo Chemical, ExxonMobil, Bekaert, Kemai and Rhodia. Purtilar, Kihn and other Goodyear executives explained to the suppliers that the company was moving away from its prior internally-focused development processes and looking to its key suppliers to help become more innovative in its product development. To emphasize that point, suppliers were given a full walk-through of the tire manufacturing and production process. While most of the suppliers made materials that went into tires, not all of them were fully aware of the actual process used to make tires. In fact, during that tour, some suppliers were able to provide constructive feedback and process improvement ideas to Goodyear right on the floor.
Outlining the challenges
With all its key suppliers together for the day, Goodyear also outlined a list of 17 specific challenges that it wanted suppliers' input on. Suppliers were advised to take the challenges back to their facilities and submit their solutions to Goodyear though a supplier web portal.
"We got hundreds of ideas from suppliers across the 17 areas
and are overwhelmed in a good way with the response we received from the supply
base," says Purtilar. The ideas ranged from those focused on materials management
to product development to commodity cost reduction. "Some were directly focused
on addressing the challenge we had given and others made us say âholy smokes,
we had never even thought about it that way," Purtilar says. 
Goodyear's Mark Purtilar, CPO
Purtilar says that many suppliers appointed specific people to focus solely on the Goodyear challenges. With a detailed process in place for evaluating the ideas, the purchasing organization then moved into the role of facilitator and worked on connecting supplier's technical staffs with the appropriate contacts within Goodyear to further develop the ideas.
Purtilar points out that Goodyear was careful to exercise the "appropriate amount of caution" in providing suppliers access to certain proprietary information, and went to its internal legal and finance teams early on to identify any risks.
And while there was some initial hesitation about the project at first from some members of Goodyear's internal technology organization, "especially during a downturn, you realize you have to find new ways to innovate," Purtilar says.
The project, in fact, has served to bring the procurement and the technology organizations closer at Goodyear. Purtilar says "we were on that path to our technology teams recognizing the value of procurement's earlier involvement in product development, but this served to solidify that. Now we're in on every innovation meeting-we don't have to ask, we get asked."
Overall "suppliers were thrilled with our being that open and let them share their new technologies in development."
In a statement from Goodyear, Bert De Graeve, CEO at supplier Bekaert Corp., which makes drawn steel wire products, said "Innovation in difficult times makes more of a difference than ever."
Purtilar says Goodyear plans to continue holding supplier innovation days. "In fact, since the last one we have two more challenges we'd like to put out to suppliers."
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