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BRAZIL
Budini Continues to Press Forward with Innovation
In an interview and exclusive tour around the Budini Group facilities in Mogi des Cruzes near Sao Paulo, which houses the Budini Mileage institute (ITS), Alexei Nicolini revealed to Retreading Business the culture of innovation and modernisation that the company embodies.
The history of the company dates
Tyre Management system back in 1982. Incidentally, this was the very first tyre tracking programme.
All things considered, this was a huge step forward at that time. Tony Nicolini was able to prove how pre- cure was a significant improvement over previous systems through the monitoring of wheel positions and how it was possible to improve the performance of a fleet and the life they were able to get out of their tyres.
Having seen the value of Nicolini’s development, Bandag eventually approached Budini and suggested that they should take the system to the USA. This led to the Nicolini family relocating to Iowa and them beginning to track tyres in the USA. Over time, they discovered that in the USA, with bigger fleets, the system needed to improve its efficiency and be more sophisticated. With this in mind, they slowly began to introduce bar codes, hand-held devices and RFIDs, which, by the mid-1990s, allowed them to finally prove that their system was able to reduce tyre costs by 30-40%. Around this time, the advent of Windows 95 meant that computers became more standardised and this resulted in Budini globalising and expanding to 30 countries worldwide. These days, Budini has developed fully a wide range of tyre related software applications for every link in the supply chain of tyres.
Now let’s jump forward 20 years. Budini is based back in what is its historical home of Brazil. Nowadays, the company is run by Tony’s son, Alexei Nicolini. The group additionally operates a service company that outsources tyre management services to a select group of customers. The service
Alexei Nicolini
company takes advantage of all of the Budini developed technology, with an objective of perfecting the tyre management processes at fleet level, training tyre managers and then finally returning all of that acquired knowledge back to the software company for further development and improvement.
The Budini organisation is made up various businesses across the tyre industry, but the previously mentioned Budini Mileage Institute
Management system operators are given iPads to input all of the data directly into the system. Yet another example of how technology, modernisation and efficient is at the heart of their operation. This is further exemplified by the introduction of a mobile laser branding vehicle, allowing clients to identify tyres within their system. The vehicles are custom designed vans equipped with a laser machine. The machine is connected to a fleet’s
back to the 1980s, when Tony Nicolini set up the first Bandag shop in Brazil. At that time, his factory was the only pre-cure plant in the country, which meant that he had to learn about how to educate fleets in the concept of cost per mile and constantly had to prove that the Bandag product was superior than the hot-caps that were dominating the market at that time.
In the early 1980s, organisations were starting to investigate computerisation, its associated advantages and costs. During this decade though, programmers were hard to come by, so Tony taught himself to programme and developed the very first version of the Budini
(ITS) boasts everything that is required to take the business forward from programmers to a training centre. Budini likens the Budini Mileage Institute to a “McDonalds for tyre handling” with it also having Continental’s first BestDrive retreading shop in Brazil on site. According to Nicolini, the key aim of the Mileage Institute is to increase the life of a casing. The company has started the process of educating and training clients in how to generate cost savings, whilst simultaneously marketing the system to key fleets. “The system is still in its early stages, but we know the direction in which it is going,” added Nicolini.
Budini offers a rich buffet of specialised services to fleets including tyre management training, software implementation, data analysis, tyre management consultancy, presentations and seminars. With the Budini Fleet
computer system, taking just 32 seconds to brand the tyre.
If all of the other developments weren’t enough, Budini have developed an inventory management for retread shops, which they expect to roll out into the US market shortly. This is currently employed in Budini’s own retread shop, Recapagens Budini, using an iPad system to track the tyres through the production process, running on a server based in the USA. Alexei Nicolini did admit that the factory is not the most modern in terms of machinery, with the factory still using the original autoclave that was fitted when the plant opened in 1982. However, the technology used to track the tyres is without doubt state of the art, leading to an intriguing combination of old machinery and new technology.
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