Method for manufacturing tires on a flexible manufacturing system

Abstract

A method of simultaneously producing production runs of tires 200 on a multi-station sequential tire manufacturing system 10, the tires 200 being from a group of tire types of different build specifications in lot sizes of one or more tires is disclosed. The steps include: scheduling the production run by imputing tire build software, wherein the software program performs the steps of: selecting the tire building equipment and materials required for the respective tire types; calculating the corresponding number of cycles each piece of building equipment must perform to build a given lot; and automatically changing to a second build specification at a lot change by switching to the second build specification after the last tire 200 of the first build specification passes; repeating the automated changing to the next build specification at each station 11-16 and 71-74) as each last tire 200 of each prior lot passes until a final lot is produced. The multi-station sequential tire manufacturing system 10 has at least four stations for carcass 4 building, each station (11-16) being spaced at a predetermined distance and preferably a multistation tread belt assembly line 30 having workstations (71-74) separate from the carcass building line 20 wherein the carcass 4 and the tread belt assemblies 3 are joined in a segmented self-locking mold 50.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.