Every player in the market is looking forward and is adapting its offer to include tyre management, and this applies to BKT just as it does to any other manufacturer
Commercial Tyre Business speaks with BKT’s Piero Torassa, Field Engineering Director, BKT Europe
Torassa explained that BKT supports customers with a full lifecycle tyre-management approach, providing constant technical assistance through a dedicated Field Engineering department – based at the European subsidiary and consisting of a team of nine specialized people, responsible for technical assistance across all over Europe, offering both on field and remote support.
BKT provides application-based tyre recommendations, identifying and suggesting the most appropriate tyre’s patterns according to the specific use cases – also in terms of load, terrain, speech, duty – to ensure correct fitment, reliability, and extended service life. Torassa adds; “The company also conducts regularly on-site operator and maintenance trainings, providing customers useful best practices, such as load management, correct inflation, damage prevention. After-sales monitoring and performance audits are conducted to identify potential premature wear and tear, in order to ensure higher durability and cost effectiveness.”
BKT’s focus is not on the large logistics fleets but rather on specialist sectors such as off the road tyres, industrial and construction tyres. The demands are different from the larger truck fleets. How involved is BKT in providing in vehicle solutions to tyre management, for example TPMS and telematics allowing fleet managers to view tyre issues?
Torassa responds; “BKT actively supports its customers to purchase pressure monitoring systems, such as the TPMS, offering technical assistance in system’s installation, monitoring of batteries, monitors and sensors replacement checking. To do this, the company collaborates closely with TPMS and telematics providers to ensure seamless compatibility with BKT product range.”
Tyre management is often considered the prerogative of the truck and bus fleets. In BKT’s specialist markets, how deep does your technology dive into tyre management? Can it specify tyres for particular jobs? Does it include driver behaviour recording?
“BKT’s approach to tyre management is both product-driven and data-driven,” says Torassa, “as we collect data about the tyres’ behaviour in different applications and conditions, then storing this information on a dedicated database to make tyres’ life predictions and to map tyres’ performances.
“In detail, our portfolio includes a wide range of tyres, tailored for the major Off-Highway sectors, where BKT has built a leading position – agriculture, construction, industrial, mining, ports, and earthmoving. Thanks to its strong commitment in research & development, BKT designs tyres in the full respect of the specific application needs, according to industry’s requests, thus being able to suggest the most suitable tyre model, compound, and tread patterns for each application.
Furthermore, with TPMS and telematics integration BKT enables the monitoring of pressure, temperature, tread wear, and cycle hours in real time, thus analysing real-time usage conditions and helping capture driver behaviour data that impacts tyre performance.”
Again, in the logistics sector, the leading players are using technology that can follow tyres throughout their use, from vehicle to vehicle, and even through retreading. Does BKT’s approach allow its technology to follow tyres if they are transferred between vehicles as sometimes happens? Can you provide a complete history for each individual tyre from start to end-of-life?
Torassa explained that BKT did not currently have a digital system that automatically tracks tyres when there are transferred from vehicles, nor follow them in this kind of way. “However, through periodic field checks we can make a comprehensive field monitoring and reporting process, thus having a complete history of the tyre along the entire life cycle, and collecting data such as wear, pressure, and tyre life.
“These regular assessments allow BKT to have reliable tyre predictions, even in the case of transfers between machines or vehicles,” continues Torassa, “thus offering insights into performance trends under different operating conditions.”
BKT does not have its own retread operation, but its tyres do get retreaded. Does retreading have an impact upon the data readings from the individual tyre?
“Yes,” says Torassa. “The retreading processes have an impact on tyre wear and tread data performances. When a tyre is retreaded, its tread profile, tread depth, and compound characteristics change. As a result, wear data collected before retreading is no longer directly comparable to post-retreading measurements.
“For this reason, once a tyre is retreaded, BKT considers it as a new lifecycle for data recording and performance analysis. All subsequent wear, pressure, and life data are then tracked from that new starting point, ensuring accuracy and consistency in performance evaluation.”
With tyre chipping becoming a standard, will that enhance tyre management technology by enabling read-write RFID on tyres?
“The adoption of tyre chipping with read-write RFID technology can certainly enhance tyre management efficiency, fastening data reading such as date of production, serial number, size, load index, etc.” agrees Torassa. “Consequently, this facilitates faster tyre identification, traceability, and inventory management throughout the tyre’s lifecycle. However, in the case of BKT tyres, operational data such as wear rate, pressure, and temperature would still be collected through conventional field checks or TPMS systems, as RFID technology currently focuses on static tyre information rather than dynamic performance data.”
