Bridgestone helps frontline workers achieve more with Microsoft 365 F5, Microsoft Entra ID

Bridgestone faced multiple challenges: inefficient paper-based systems on the factory floor and frontline workers who were isolated from its digital environment. It needed a secure but easily accessed, productivity-enhancing digital solution.

The company provided each frontline worker with a unique digital identity via Microsoft Entra ID, which is used with FIDO2 keys for passwordless access to a factory-ready, rubberized tablet device. It manages the entire system centrally with Microsoft Intune.

This streamlined digital machine status reporting system deeply enhanced productivity, saving valuable time for factory floor supervisors and frontline workers. It also eliminated reams of paper in line with Bridgestone’s sustainability goals.

Driving sustainable change

After nine decades of global leadership in the mobility space, Bridgestone’s commitment to tire quality, innovation, and sustaining the world around it is stronger than ever. As it considered its promise of superior quality to customers, the company focused on the people behind that promise: its frontline workers. Bridgestone needed to solve two very different issues: gaining greater factory efficiency and bringing those key employees into the corporate fold. The answer lay in connecting the factory floor to the rest of Bridgestone. Microsoft identity solutions were the key.

Envisioning frontline worker connection

The Bridgestone EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) region was acutely aware of the contrast between the work options available to its corporate and frontline workers. “Our premium products require a premium workforce,” muses Bart Kerkhofs, Vice President of IT at Bridgestone EMEA. “Our frontline workers are definitely part of that workforce, so they need the best tools available.”

An easy win was obvious: improving factory machine status reporting—a manual, paper-based process that cost supervisors at least an hour a day. Automating this function would reap real-time reporting efficiencies and eliminate vast amounts of paper. But factory conditions challenge electronic devices with dust, impact hazards, and other risks. Bridgestone needed devices that could withstand harsh conditions, shared across shifts and by multiple users. Security is of paramount importance for driving Bridgestone’s storied innovation, mandating complex passwords. But frontline workers need to multitask under constant time pressure, and passwords were frustrating.

“Our frontline workers use Microsoft Entra ID to connect to everything they need in the cloud, knowing that they have the security advantage of Microsoft 365.”

Saioa Mielgo, Shop Floor Program Manager, Bridgestone EMEA

Rolling out an innovative identity vision

Bridgestone worked with Microsoft partner Algoritmia to invent a solution that ticked every box: a ruggedized tablet enabled with Microsoft Entra ID and FIDO2 keys for passwordless authentication. Frontline workers use the key or a fingerprint to access the Microsoft 365 F5 applications they need. Bridgestone IT manages the devices and user IDs with Microsoft Intune. “This was the first time that Bridgestone created a centrally managed, trusted device,” says Saioa Mielgo, Shop Floor Program Manager at Bridgestone EMEA. “Our frontline workers use Microsoft Entra ID to connect to everything they need in the cloud, knowing that they have the security advantage of Microsoft 365.”

Guiding an employee group unaccustomed to using information technology at work was a challenge that Dario Stipo, IT Product Owner at Bridgestone EMEA, took seriously. “We didn’t want to implement the solution so aggressively that we would impact tire production, but we needed to bring everyone on board quickly,” he recalls. “We’re proud to have achieved timely 100% digital identity deployment to our frontline workers with Entra ID. They’re truly connected teammates.” Bridgestone change management teams ensured that how-to materials were distributed in six languages, customized to each of its seven European factories.

“The more efficiently we can produce premium tires, the greater the benefit to our customers. We relied on our relationship with Microsoft to make our digital tools available to all employees, and that empowerment is key to Factory 4.0.”

Bart Kerkhofs, Vice President, IT, Bridgestone EMEA

Connecting every worker for a matrix of advantages

Bridgestone’s deployment took less than six months. Now 5,000 frontline workers use 826 tablet devices every day, on every shift. The deployment elevated Bridgestone’s machine status reporting, opening new possibilities for factory floor performance—Bridgestone’s “Factory 4.0” vision for the future. “Without Entra ID, we couldn’t have connected our frontline workers to our digital landscape,” says Mielgo. “It delivers the secure access that makes their efficiency improvement possible. It also improved morale, because they’re now able to access the same systems that office workers use for HR and other applications.”

“The more efficiently we can produce premium tires, the greater the benefit to our customers,” concludes Kerkhofs. “We relied on our relationship with Microsoft to make our digital tools available to all employees, and that empowerment is key to Factory 4.0.”

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