Rolling forward: CEAT’s journey from stuck in spreadsheets to Lighthouse Factory
There’s a moment in every manufacturing company’s journey when you realize that doing things the old way just won’t cut it anymore. For CEAT Tyres, that moment came around 2017. The company, a century old tire manufacturer with a genuinely global footprint, was generating mountains of data but couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it.
Big company, big complexity
CEAT operates six manufacturing facilities across India, plus operations in Sri Lanka and a recently acquired brand from Michelin. They export to 110 countries, maintain R&D centers in India and Germany, and employ thousands of people. By any measure, they’re a serious player in the tire industry.
But scale creates complexity. And complexity creates problems.
CEAT needed a unified platform—a single source of truth for all their plant operational data and KPIs. They needed complete traceability of materials from raw components through finished goods. And they needed to control inventory of semi-finished stock to eliminate overaged materials that were eating into margins.
The reality on the shop floor was even more fragmented. They lacked end-to-end visibility into their manufacturing processes—no real-time insights into what was actually happening at each step. Quality assurance was reactive, not proactive. They’d catch problems after they happened, not before. Yield was inconsistent, which meant unpredictable costs and unpredictable quality. And getting products to customers on time? That was a constant struggle because they couldn’t reliably schedule or forecast production.
“When we started our journey, one of the main challenges we faced was data quality,” explains Ranjit Kanbarkar, Head of Advanced Manufacturing at CEAT. “We were generating huge amounts of data, but the quality and clarity of that data determined what insights we could provide to our business users for decision making.”
These weren’t abstract problems. They directly impacted the bottom line and frustrated customers who expected better.
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When CEAT met Siemens
That’s when CEAT turned to Siemens to implement a Manufacturing Execution System. The MES wasn’t just another software tool sitting on a shelf. It forced the company to question everything about how it operated.
The approach was layered and thoughtful. First came the core technology: Siemens MES, Opcenter Execution Process, integrated with their existing SAP business software, creating a unified data repository. Then they added Siemens Teamcenter for product lifecycle management, Tecnomatix for simulation and scheduling, and Mendix as a front end aggregation platform.
But here’s what made the real difference: CEAT didn’t just install technology and hope people would use it. They established an Industry 4.0 lab, reskilled managers for digital roles, and trained operators to embrace new ways of working. Most importantly, they shifted from a technology first approach to a business first one.
This shift in mindset proved critical. It’s easy to implement software. It’s hard to get people to actually use it in ways that matter.
Initially, we led with technology, but adoption was poor. The moment we made it business led, asking what business actually needed, adoption accelerated dramatically. People realized technology was assisting them, not burdening them.
Ranjit Kanbarkar, CEAT Tyres
@ Copyright CEAT Tyres
What changed on the shop floor
The MES implementation at CEAT’s Chennai factory delivered concrete results. Product quality improved as rework and process scrap decreased. Rejection rates dropped because the system ensured the right materials were used for each product. Work order management and transfer order management became transparent and reliable.
But the real win was data. CEAT created a massive repository of operational information that their team used to build 30 different digital use cases within a year and a half. These weren’t theoretical exercises. They solved real business problems.
The impact was significant enough that two CEAT facilities earned World Economic Forum Lighthouse Factory designations, recognizing their advanced digitization levels. That’s not something you achieve by accident.
@ Copyright CEAT Tyres
How the future looks like
CEAT isn’t resting on these accomplishments. The company is experimenting with digital twins for scheduling, which allows them to run what if scenarios that conventional software simply can’t handle. They’re exploring something called agentic flows, where intelligent agents within multiple platforms coordinate to solve complex business problems.
We’re asking Siemens how digital twins can contribute to these future solutions. We’re trying to solve more complex problems where we need to pull data from multiple platforms, not just Siemens.
Ranjit Kanbarkar, CEAT Tyres
CEAT’s story isn’t really about software. It’s about recognizing that transformation requires more than technology. It requires organizational commitment, serious attention to data quality, and a willingness to put business needs before technical preferences.
For manufacturers facing similar challenges, CEAT’s journey offers a practical roadmap: start with a solid foundation, ensure your data is clean and trustworthy, engage your business stakeholders from day one, and keep evolving. That’s how you roll forward into the future.
Learn more about Opcenter Execution Process, Siemens MES solution for process industries.
