About C&C

Mehmet Koral has 40 years of experience in the tire industry. He started his career at Lassa Tire Manufacturing, Izmit, Turkey (now BRISA). Koral has worked for the BRISA Technology division for 22 plus years.

He participated in the Development of Passenger, Light Truck Commercial, TBR, and OTR tires at BRISA. He managed OE tire approval tests for automotive manufacturers. He managed both standard development and regulatory tests both indoors and outdoors. Mehmet was an active member in ETRTO (European Tire and Rim Technical Organization) as a Brisa member. He worked in the Technical Advisory Liaison Sub-Committee, Passenger Tire Sub-Committee, and Commercial Tire Sub-Committee for about 10 years.

He served as the Chairman of the UN ECE Tires Committee for Turkey for 10 years. In this position, he worked closely with the Ministry of Industry and Technology in Turkey, TSE (Turkish Standards Institute ), and OSD ( Automotive Manufacturers Association), and the Tire Manufacturers in Turkey.

He retired in 2003 and then he founded his company C&C Core Competence Ltd. on Feb. 4, 2004. He consulted Tire Manufacturing Machinery companies in China, Europe, the USA. He provided advisory services to independent tire companies in China, India, Russia, and the Republic of Tatarstan.

C&C Core Competence Limited

The very first idea for C&C Core Competences Ltd. initiated 28 years ago in Brussels in 1993. While at BRISA, Mr. Koral gathered with other Tire Industry professionals at a cozy restaurant near the ETRTO building on the Avenue Brugmann in Brussels. They were in the ETRTO Head office in Brussel to discuss the ETRTO Advisory and Liaison Sub-Committee meeting agenda. The conversation started with upcoming challenges for tire designers and manufacturers and finally turned to retirement plans. Mehmet was just 42 years old.

As a member of BRISA, Mehmet was also the chairman of the UN ECE Tire Sub-committee of Turkey and was closely working with the Ministry of Industry and Technology of Turkey, TSE (Turkish Standards Institute), Tire Manufacturers, and OSD (Automotive Manufacturers Association) in Turkey.

During a joint meeting with ETRTO and BLIC (now ETRMA) in Brussels, Mehmet met the General Secretary of BLIC who was very active in the European Tire and Rubber goods manufacturing industry. General Secretary’s very successful career created a spark in Mehmet to consider advising independent tire manufacturers in the future. The ETRTO was geared toward expertise in Technical Standards and Engineering Design Information for Tire and Rim manufacturers in Europe.

Mehmet continued to attend meetings in Brussels and Geneva as a BRISA senior manager for the next ten years. His involvement in ETRTO and relations with BLIC encouraged him to consider starting a private business to help independent tire manufacturers in tire design, development, manufacturing, and performance improvements.

In 2004, Mehmet began working as a consultant and representative for well-known tire manufacturing machinery manufacturers. Using his expertise, Mehmet realized many tire manufacturing companies were not highly knowledgeable of the technologies they used. Since problems in the market usually resulted from design, or manufacturing, or application-related causes, companies need help to work more intelligently with what Mehmet calls a ” Know-Why” rather than just a “Know-How” approach. For Mehmet, tire manufacturers had to:

• Understand the capability, process tolerances, and precision of critical process machinery, and create their machinery specification as a reference and discussion roadmap before starting and finalizing investment decisions.

• Involve from day one tire design, engineering, manufacturing and QA teams in discussions with machinery and raw materials suppliers.

To assist tire manufacturers, Mehmet involved in a project initiated by a European steel cord manufacturer/supplier that has a Technical Center in Jiangsu province in China. He consulted on-site for well-established eight Chinese tire manufacturing companies. He stresses the importance of the steel cord wire construction and filament diameters in the TBR tire Belt and Carcass (body ply). He consulted the importance of the targeted tire user services, and the corresponding belt design, and the bead area design in TBR Tires. Equally important is manufacturing quality in the component preparations, and tire building, and tire curing operations.

In course of the project, he worked closely with eight TBR tire manufacturer’s plants in China. He made Field Trips into the tire scrapyards including field trips to large truck and bus fleet companies. He made on-site observations and obtained some sample failed TBR Tires for further cut section analyses. Because it was a must for searching the root cause for the failure of that tire. He sat examples of the procedure to be followed up to reach that end. including field trips to large truck and bus fleet companies. He kept saying ” if you have a question, ask the failed tire”. Do not start failure explanations without close observation, questioning, then followed up- by cut section- analyses; both physically and compounding-wise.

He used to keep asking ” Why ….? ” questions at least 3 steps one after the other. Usually continued to 5-steps asking ” Why…..?” first, then listening to the answers after each ” Why…..?” to find the root cause at the end.

Using this newly gathered information, Mehmet issued a report and gave a presentation to an audience of engineers and top management team of the steel cord manufacturer/supplier company at the Technical Center in Jiangyin, Jiangsu province in China. He was requested to do the same project in the Russian tire market. After visiting two Russian tire manufacturing companies, one Head Office in Moscow, a few transporting fleets near Moscow, and a plant in Yaroslavl, he gave another report and a well-received presentation to the engineers and top-management of the steel cord company. This concluded an informative trip of 35 days in China, 10 days in Russia, and three days in Bratislava. As a result, Mehmet’s work contributed to the followings for the company;

• Stronger establishment of the steel cord supplier’s brand and products in both Chinese and Russian markets.
• Increased penetration to TBR tire manufacturing companies in China. The supply was by importation at that time. Later, the company invested in steel cord manufacturing plant in Russia and China.
• Inauguration of the steel cord facilty in the Lipetsk Special Economic Zone (SEZ) some 400kms south of Moscow in 2010.
• Another manufacturing plant built in Shenyang(Liaoning province China in 2010. Completed acquisition of a competitor’s cord plants in China, Italy, Romania, and Brazil. Furthermore two more plants in Yanzhou,China, and Izmit,Turkey. Good thing is that these are accompanied by the long-term supply agreements.
• At the same time, these experiences served to validate the market need for Mehmet’s unique value proposition. Mehmet observed the value of acting as a customer advocate during the pre-sales meetings, machinery specification review discussions. He observed the needs of the customers sometimes with eye-opening observations from the shopfloors of tire plants, and he developped value propositions to improve their operations.

17 Years of Forging Strong Business Relationships

C&C Core Competence Industrial Consultancy is registered in 2004 and continues to provide the premier consultancy for tire technology to the tire and rubber industry in Turkey and Egypt. He continues to represent leading Tire Manufacturing and Testing Machinery manufacturers from the EU, the USA, and China.

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