While true perfection may only be possible in unearthly realms, Goodyear's IMPACT (short for Integrated Manufacturing, Precision Assembly, Cellular Technology) produces "a perfect tire," according to Richard "Red" Richardson,

who's been building tires at Goodyear’s Danville, Va., plant for 34 years.
More than five years in development, IMPACT represents a new technology that integrates component formation and assembly, automated tire assembly and curing within a cellular system. Goodyear says the result is significant improvement in tire quality, uniformity and manufacturing "turns." The new method of tire building also increases precision, manufacturing efficiency and reduces production costs.
According to Goodyear, IMPACT increases productivity by 135% and cuts cycle times by 70%. In addition, it minimizes splices and reduces the number of process steps by half. "This allows for improved consistency, from tire to tire," said Dan Harrison, manager of Quality & Technology at the Danville plant. "The result is that the IMPACT system manufactures tires with exceptional uniformity and precision. We’ve taken the variability out of steer tire manufacturing."
IMPACT serves to replace today’s traditional method for assembling components and building tires that requires huge factories and hundreds of steps. In the conventional process, components such as natural and synthetic rubber, carbon black, chemicals and other ingredients are combined in huge mixing machines called banburys. The compounds are combined with other materials to create components such as plies, belts, sidewalls, barrier, beads and other tire parts. They are extruded and rolled into rolls. A tire builder then assembles these components into a so-called "green tire," which is later cured in a press.
"Back before IMPACT everything was hands-on," Richardson said. "We would apply every component by hand. You eyeballed everything according to the specs you had. We produced a quality tire but my level of quality might not be the same as your level of quality."
In the company’s Akron technical center, Goodyear engineers designed the "hot former," a unique calendering system that produces and forms 12 of a truck tire’s 23 components in a continuous manufacturing system. Goodyear has secured six U.S. patents for the device, which is the core of IMPACT.
The hot former consists of several pairs of heated steel rollers and a conveyor system. Each pair of rollers squeezes out and forms one of the tire components. A trained operator using a laser-guided machine lays down and combines the components into a continuous sheet of rubber material. The material is then wound into specially designed reels, which are moved to the tire building area. With the hot former, Goodyear is able to keep tire components fresher, which makes it easier to adhere them to other components when they are formed together.
"Tires have traditionally been made from a lot of unique components," Harrison said. "Now we’ve eliminated those individual steps. By building a single ‘mono-component,’ we’ve significantly reduced the impact of the four S’s – sets, spotting, splices and symmetry. With the hot former and the IMPACT process, we have very little variation. We’ve taken a lot of the human intervention out of it."
Richardson says his job has changed but he still enjoys it. "Working this machine certainly keeps you on your toes. The machine takes the guesswork out of building a tire and allows us to have a hand in controlling quality. Instead of making six splices as I did before, I now just make one with the machine and it’s accurate."