1.  Please identify one significant development in the tire industry in the last 2-3 years, and explain its importance.
Actually, development of tyres depends on several major factors – requirement of car industry, tyre technology own research base, strict EU technical requirements ( 117.2 ) and Industry 4:0 age.

If we see car industry requirement, number of tyre sizes and models has increased rapidly last years ( SUV popularity, electro cars acceleration, new a and more sizes, .. ).
At the same time, tyre producers develop more and more complicated tyre construction ( tread consist of 7 compounds, .. )  and compounds ( silica, liquid mixing, .. ).
And beside of two mentioned factors, tyre producers have to modify production principles based on Industry 4.0 trends.  

If we consider all mentioned factors, we see, that tyre producers have never met similar requirements and tasks during whole tyre industry history. It happened just during last 2 – 4 years.
The most important is, that tyre producers are still able to fulfil all mentioned requirement and tyre industry is not weak factor of total world automotive industry development ( comparing to battery industry, for example ).

2. What do you see as main obstacles to the development of the tire manufacturing industry in the coming years?
All factors, which I mentioned in first answer, will be developed during next years for sure.
Question is, if we are able to fulfil all requirements in future and where is the border of actual tyre industry technology…
Because tyre technology is based on the same principles more than 100 years  ( rubber – curing ).

I personally do not expect, that tyre industry principles will be changed during coming years. Maybe later.
Yes, we will develop new compounds ( liquid mixing based on chemical procedure, ..  ), new sizes, new constructions.
But the tyre will be still black and rubber smelling during coming years for sure.

3.  Which technologies will play the biggest role in shaping the ‘tire factory of the future’, and why?
My previous answers were very general.
Now, I will speak about particular part of tyre industry, which is core business of our company ( Mesnac European Centre ) – tyre building machines.
Tyre building machine of future – comparing actual TBM construction – will “see” its building process and will be able to self-adjust its parameters according to results of self-inspection.
This not science fiction, this is near future, which we are developing in MERTC.
Today, we are able to measure ( through hundreds measuring points ) run-out of tooling before building,  centring of components on drums and quality of all components splicing.
When green tyre is finished, we are able to measure its run-out and we can compare it with final uniformity test. We can do it today.
Tomorrow ( till the end of the year ), our TBM will react to measuring results by self-adjustment without operator presence.   
How our customers ( tyre producers ) will be happy, if our new, full automatic TBM P-PRO2 self-control test of green tyre run-out matches 98% of final cured tyre uniformity test?
This is TBM technology of “tire factory of the future” …

4.  What major changes do you expect to see in tire manufacture and supply over the next few years?
Automatic process, fully under control of intelligent inspection systems, able to make self-adjustment according to inspection result.
Possibility of very quick machines parameters changing to be able to produce many different tyre sizes / types during one day or shift.
New compounds based on new mixing principles ( not mechanical mixing, but chemical mixing ), offering higher tyre millage and better tyre parameters ( adhesion, .. ) at the same time.
RFID chip as standard for each tyre.
And more …