Goodyear Migrated to Microsoft to Effectively Keep Its Plants Running
Microsoft Teams empowered Goodyear to deliver robust customer experiences with enhanced productivity
Challenges
Founded in 1898, Goodyear is one of the world’s largest tire companies, with 62,000 associates and 46 facilities around the world. As a company dedicated to keeping people moving, Goodyear wasn’t about to slow down because of global travel restrictions due to COVID-19. The company depends on more than 2,500 engineers to keep its complex production processes running optimally. When the engineers could no longer travel to factories for equipment installation or troubleshooting, Goodyear turned to Microsoft Teams running on RealWear assisted-reality wearable computers to bring the engineering experts into the plants virtually.
However, even after Goodyear deployed Teams to its office and retail associates, it was still looking for a solution to bring video into its manufacturing facilities. The company investigated more than 50 connected devices before selecting RealWear for its form factor and IP66 ruggedized rating for factory use. Goodyear liked the RealWear hardware and the hands-free operation it provided, but it recognized many limitations with the conferencing software for the device.
Initiatives
Having globally deployed Teams to more than 30,000 people, Goodyear already had an effective collaboration platform in place when it closed offices and its associates began working from home. Its associates had readily adopted Teams for document sharing, chat, and video meetings, and they were well-versed in working with colleagues remotely. Then, Microsoft and RealWear announced their collaboration to put Teams on the RealWear device, and Goodyear had its solution.
Within months of releasing the RealWear device with Teams, Goodyear had deployed the devices to all its plants. The company immediately began using them to connect subject matter experts to the plants and provide a hands-free conference experience for plant personnel so they could perform work as they received instructions. Another way Goodyear has improved collaboration is by enabling more people to participate in troubleshooting problems. Another advantage is that engineers can immediately start troubleshooting with offsite people just by starting a Teams meeting. One major benefit of using the RealWear device with Microsoft 365 is managing the devices with Microsoft Intune and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).
Results
After users reserve a device, they can join a Teams meeting with just a few voice commands. Another benefit that Goodyear noticed when comparing the Teams solution with other collaboration solutions for the RealWear device is how effective the noise cancellation technology is. Although the device provides noise cancellation for the wearer and can identify voice commands in noisy environments, factory noises can still be transmitted into a meeting, but Microsoft Teams removes this background noise. So, it is safe to say that deploying Teams has enabled Goodyear to deliver a great customer experience with enhanced productivity.
