In 2003 and 2004, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company found itself in a definite slump, suffering declining revenues and losing out to its two main competitors, Michelin and Bridgestone. In response, Goodyear leveraged its high performance computer clusters and its ongoing collaborative relationship with the Sandia National Laboratories to change the way it developed tires. Rather than designing, building and testing physical prototypes, Goodyear engineers used modeling and simulation to test virtual models and significantly cut time to market. The result was the Assurance® all-weather tire featuring TripleTred Technology®, a huge hit that helped Goodyear not only climb out of the hole it was in, but continue on to launch a flurry of new tires that resulted in record profits.
