From spreadsheets to agile, data-driven decision-making

The customer

Bridgestone, the world’s largest tire and rubber company, operates in over 150 countries, delivering high-quality tires for all types of vehicles. In addition to tires, the company produces industrial rubber and sporting goods, earning global recognition for its innovation and commitment to sustainability.

By leveraging Anaplan together with Bluecrux, Bridgestone is optimizing supplier capacity, resource planning, and integrating seamlessly with upstream operations. Through building internal expertise on the platform, the company empowers its teams to independently manage and scale solutions, driving efficiency and innovation in global planning for new product launches.

  • Challenges

    • Manual planning of tasks for new product introductions, relying on Excel.
    • Struggled to meet monthly cycles for planning NPI tasks.
    • Lacked real-time responsiveness to external changes, such as shifting priorities or plant capacities.
    • No capability for feasible scenario planning.
    • Mold ordering was based on a basic solver with no automatic link to inputs from other systems.
    • Limited to ordering from only one supplier at a time.
  • Solutions

    • Eliminated manual planning of NPI tasks, enabling real-time reactions.
    • Implemented monthly cycles for task assignment.
    • Introduced scenario planning capabilities.
    • Achieved automatic integration with existing operational tools.
    • Extended the logic used in basic solver to represent better the real business context.
    • Enabled splitting orders across multiple suppliers to meet business needs.
    • Allowed adjustments to NPI task planning based on supplier capacities.
    • Provided the ability to create and evaluate multiple scenarios.
  • Results

    • Ability to react in real time to changing external factors.
    • Flexibility to adjust capacities and priorities to find the most optimal plan.
    • Scenario-based planning for improved decision-making.
    • Cost minimization through efficient planning and resource allocation.
    • Option to link NPI task planning to supplier capacities when desired.

Anaplan has empowered us to make better decisions by simulating scenarios on the fly, while easily understanding their impact on our business.
Carlos Montoro
Head of New product introduction at Bridgestone

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