Goodyear CIO Raman Mehta on Making Speed the Strategy for Enterprise AI

Raman Mehta (0:00)

I think our journey is how we become from AI curious to AI serious.

Peter High (0:06)

Welcome to Technovation. I'm Peter High, President of Metis Strategy. My guest today is Raman Mehta. Raman is the Chief Information Officer of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, a 128-year-old tire manufacturer, headquartered in Akron, Ohio, that earned $18.3 billion in revenue in 2025

Raman took on the role in December of 2025 and leads the company's global technology strategy, spanning IT, digital strategy, cybersecurity, and infrastructure. But his responsibilities also include customer experience, dealer operations, internal productivity, and supply chain and logistics. Raman and his team are focused on the strategic adoption of new technology at an industrial scale, digital transformation, and enterprise platform modernization. He's been a leading voice in the importance of enterprise data architecture and driving that transformation, developing an enterprise-grade intelligence framework designed to help large organizations build data systems capable of supporting advanced AI and analytics.

Prior to joining Goodyear, Raman held CIO roles at Johnson Electric, Vistion, Fabrinet, and EV across North America and Asia. He's a CIO Hall of Fame inductee as well. Raman, welcome to Technovation. It's great to speak with you today.

Raman Mehta (1:13)

Peter, always a pleasure chatting with you.

Peter High (1:16)

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I share that sentiment. Thank you so much, Raman. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Well, let's take a moment, if you would, and describe this 128-year-old business that you helped run. I would love your own words to describe this remarkable business, if you would.

Raman Mehta (2:39)

I think this is a remarkable opportunity for me to become associated with such a strong worldwide global brand name. If you look at Goodyear, we operate in 19 countries, and I actually have almost 48 manufacturing facilities. So very, very diverse manufacturing footprint.

Look at the portfolio. We deal with consumers, commercial, aviation, farm sector, motorsports, recreational.

The portfolio and the reach that we have through our B2B, through our B2C and B2B2C channels is remarkable. The product portfolio, the brand is known worldwide. And as a CIO, my challenge is to bring the startup mindset into a 128 year old legacy organization that has gone through its ups and downs. And how do we ride the current technology wave and really serve our customers, our shareholders much more effectively and efficiently.

Peter High (3:49)

What a great place to begin, certainly, Raman. I'd love to understand some of the ingredients to bring that startup mindset to a storied organization like yours.

Raman Mehta (3:58)

Definitely. So Peter, one of my first message to my teams when I joined in December was that momentum builds clarity. You've got to start moving. You need to take the first step. You need to go beyond the pilots where you're actually shipping something meaningful that adds to the bottom line, that adds to a better customer service. So that's one of our main mantras to really make speed as our strategy. Now, to do that, we also need to look at our IT and digital landscape. Obviously, we have pretty much the best-in-class ERP systems, the manufacturing execution systems, PLM. How are these systems and our processes allowing us to take advantage of the AI first business model is my challenge right now.

We are re-skilling our teams. We are having these tough conversations with our business partners.

We just don't want to automate things for the sake of automation, but can we redesign our processes? Can we reimagine our processes? A lot of challenges, as you mentioned in the beginning, the data quality, the silo functions, and this is what it takes a village to really uplift. I see a lot of energy. I've got the full support from our executive leadership team, and we are super excited about this journey.