Michelin: A Century of Secrets

“Here is a book that reveals the inner and secret aspect of a French and global company. It began in Clermont-Ferrand around 1884 with the manufacture of brake blocks lined with rubber for horse-drawn vehicles. Today, it constitutes the second largest tire group worldwide and is on its way to becoming the number one, thanks to the spirit of the House: tenacity, creativity, secrecy in design and manufacturing, rigor in management, and a sense, often humorous, of advertising: the now-legendary Bibendum; the red-covered guide with its stars; road signs.”

“Among the major technical milestones, the removable tire, the detachable rim (1906), the twin wheel (1908), the pilot tire in 1937, the X tire in 1948.”

“André and Édouard Michelin, the founders, had a passion for aviation. In 1908, they created the famous Cup. In 1912, they called for five thousand combat “aeroplanes.” “Our future is in the air,” they claimed, thus showing themselves as pioneers. During the First World War, the Bréguet-Michelin contributed to the victory.”

“Success is never a miracle and never emerges fully armed from the chain of chance. If there is something that is built day after day, it is what we call luck.”

“The first is the primacy of the product. Never, at any point in its history, has Michelin ceased to maintain a comfortable lead over all its competitors: the release of the Pilote tire in 1937, the development of the X tire during World War II, and then its release in 1948, are just the most prestigious milestones in the history of its research offices.”

“The second element of this success is undoubtedly a mastery of industrial time, which we a little too hastily cover today with the notion of planning, but which is just as much about the knowledge of manufacturing rigidities as it is about the proper appreciation of the public’s capacity for evolution.”

“And then there is, among all, the cardinal virtue of risk acceptance. There is not a new adventure, there is not a nascent experience that the group has not been interested in and on which it has not immediately gambled big. Technical bets, certainly, but also the gamble of international establishment achieved very early and for the most part before the war.”

“Finally, and paradoxically, what strikes me in the history of Michelin is the opposition between the jealously guarded secrecy over the design and implementation of the product and an undeniable and sometimes revolutionary taste for information and public relations. The managers who refused entry to their workshops to General de Gaulle were also the heirs of Edouard Michelin and, like him, managed, year after year, from Salon to Salon, to always maintain public interest and often by making them smile.”

“Regimes come and go, crises follow one another, and people change. In Clermont-Ferrand, the Rome of the Michelin empire, the obsession remains: the tire. Nothing but the tire. And not just any tire: “The best at the best price.” For nearly a century now, Europe’s most secretive company has set its rhythm, calibrated its clock, and adjusted its ambitions according to this passion that borders on mysticism.”

“Since the ties were broken with Citroën, Michelin has done even better. Although it is no longer the first in France — only the tenth, with its thirty-two and a half billion francs in sales in 1980 — it is preparing to become the first in the world for more than three generations in the industry to which it has devoted itself, body and soul, tires[1](private://read/01jkqdqdgs7t399cyecbezrhj0/#ftn_fn1).”

“Michelin is the tire company that dedicates the most money to research each year. And this, undoubtedly, for a good half-century.”

“Contradiction between its isolation and its global dynamism. Located in a hard-to-access region (Clermont will likely not be connected to Paris by highway before the end of this decade), far from car manufacturers, major universities, financial institutions, and national and European political assemblies, Michelin nevertheless manages to find in this loyalty to its roots the sources of its originality, strength, and common sense. Its expansion is largely explained by this fierce determination to draw fully and abundantly from its own earthy and rural roots.”

“Michelin can control everything, everything is to its scale, and everything depends on”

“world for a group of this size, a partnership limited by shares. A legal structure entirely unsuitable for a time when decentralization of decisions and distribution of responsibilities are increasingly necessary.”

“The only one to content itself, like an early-century SME, with two pillars, central planning and personnel service, around which is organized a vague and shifting constellation of about thirty departments, generally left to the discretion of its leaders.”

““The number one problem in this House, states an executive, is knowing who is responsible for what. A search that is often long and exasperating, leading almost always to approximate conclusions.””

“Across all latitudes, the company has a visceral aversion to waste, to anything that might appear, however remotely, unnecessary or ostentatious.”

“Questions of money have never prevented the realization of a project deemed essential by engineers or merchants.”

“When necessary, the company never hesitates to spend fortunes on plane tickets, industrial robots, or ultra-sophisticated measurement equipment.”

“Conversely, in the name of these same principles of rigor, Michelin can also push its errors or blind spots to their ultimate consequences. Always knowing in the end — the Citroën affair was the best example — how to behave like a great gentleman, paying the bills and resetting the counters.”

“Under the pretext of preserving its manufacturing secrets and the work of its research offices, it satisfies the minimum legal requirements regarding informing its shareholders, does the bare minimum in its interactions with its clientele, while reacting suspiciously towards others. By refusing to notice that it also depends on its distribution networks, its image with financial markets, the stock exchange, mass media, political power, trade unions, and ultimately, the vox populi. Such an attitude can only hold as long as the company makes a flawless journey, and the political environment remains on the sidelines.”

““Outside of orthodoxy,” says an engineer, “you no longer exist. But you are never certain, due to the fragmentation of power and the lack of guidance on the Company’s general policy, of having the trust of your superiors.””

“Michelin, ultimately, is irreducible, atypical. A planet that only revolves around itself. “The company,” confides one of its senior executives, “ultimately no one knows how it operates, which makes it advance at a hellish pace.” The more one tries to understand it, the more it eludes, the more it seems elusive. “Ask a centipede how it moves,” jokes François Michelin himself, “and it will get a headache.””

“The quality of its products and research. The radial tire has been and remains the ultimate weapon. Since the development of the X tire, its competitors have had no choice but to align themselves. And the company has always had a prototype in reserve, a major innovation ready to be released on the market. Because the product mystique has always taken priority over financial constraints. The company’s total commitment to its technical advancement has allowed it to accumulate fantastic experience and maintain a lead. It has also enabled it to have excellent productivity. In 1981, Michelin is undoubtedly the tire company with the lowest production costs compared to all European and American competition.”

“2. The selection of personnel. “Bib” has never been for everyone. As long as it remained a provincial SME, the Clermont-Ferrand firm was able to rely heavily on the substantial reservoir constituted by the local workforce. It was able to choose at its discretion those who best suited its needs. For about twenty years, despite its expansion in all directions, it has always managed, by establishing itself in rural or lightly industrialized areas, to find the workers, technicians, and managers to support its rapid expansion. By continuing to recruit them not exclusively based on pure intelligence criteria but also by betting on their adaptability to the company and its peculiarities.”

“3° Success cements success. The pride of belonging to a firm that gains market penetration, releases products whose technology it fully masters and which are considered the best in the world, allows one to endure some oddities and some vexations. Or to forget some annoyances. “While”

““the Clermont group constantly moves forward by professing that everything must be done everywhere and all the time to progress. And by actually doing it.””

“dest success. Bouguereau said of him: “He paints like a pig but draws like a master.””

“the famous chemist from Glasgow, Charles McIntosh who, in 1823, discovered, by dissolving rubber gum in benzine, the method to waterproof fabrics and cloths. A layer of fabric, a layer of solution, another layer of fabric, a machine to press it all, and McIntosh began manufacturing—without ever being able to keep up with demand—coats, frock coats, uniforms for Her Majesty’s officers.”

““The house was on its last breath. Edouard Michelin went to see an old aunt who had money and lived alone. He needed five hundred thousand francs. The aunt said she would give her answer the next day. When her nephew came the following day — feeling quite inadequate — she made the requested sum available to him. She had simply taken the time between the two visits to secure a room with the Little Sisters of the Poor in case the venture went badly.””

“Everything is to be done. You have to rely on yourself, make do with nothing. There is no rubber school, no books, and this time, no teacher. It’s a field too marginal, too uncertain. Engineers, even if they graduate from the Central School, the Arts and Crafts, or even chemical schools, can only provide partial answers. Graduates, therefore, in Edouard’s eyes, will only have secondary importance. The workers—because they are in direct contact with manufacturing problems—are best positioned to solve them. They must be trusted. For the new boss—who openly admits his total incompetence—his role is clear: he must help these workers make progress. It’s necessary to go into the field, question their ideas and methods. The company’s philosophy is being developed.”

“Edouard would later recount: “I had to run a factory with fifty people in it. “Some of the productions were good, another part bad. There were no engineers; only a foreman, who was not capable and only knew part of the manufacturing process. “I was completely ignorant of rubber manufacturing. “The first necessity was for me to learn my trade. I could only learn it by questioning the workers. “So I had to have a conversation with them where I was their inferior, and the best way to get them to talk was to openly and completely admit my ignorance.”

““In practice, I conducted my questioning in the tone of friendly conversation by saying: ‘How are you going to do that? — Why can’t you do it differently? — Isn’t there another way?’” “I explained these questions to the worker, asking if he encountered any difficulties in the execution that I had not anticipated. “I noticed that even when I knew the issue quite well, this friendly conversation was extremely useful for gathering facts. “There are things that the man who handles the material for eight hours a day knows, while his boss, who is necessarily occupied with multiple issues, may be unaware of them.””

“an English tourist arrives in the yard of the factory on Place des Carmes. A cart drawn by oxen brings his bike, whose tires have just burst. Instead of going to Torrilhon, who is known in Auvergne as the specialist in solid and hollow bands, he goes to Michelin. An extraordinary coincidence, even if the address given by a passerby was correct: the Carmes factory also used to manufacture, until very recently, solid or hollow rubber tubes for bikes.”

“François Michelin explains: “Before the next flat tire, he had time to discover the extraordinary fertility of the idea of placing a layer of compressed air between the machine and the ground. It was an unknown comfort until then, but it also offered unprecedented possibilities for all kinds of rolling devices since the invention of the wheel.””

“Edouard replies to his brother: “Riding on air is a wonderful thing. But the glued tire is a ‘mess.’ As long as it takes a day to patch a nail hole, the new tire cannot develop. What is needed is to make it easily removable, and that will change the future of the bicycle.” Edouard Michelin rolls up his sleeves and locks himself in a factory shed with Arnaud, his trusted man. To ensure a flat tire is no longer a disaster, the tire must be removable by mechanical means—no glue, no needle—and anyone should be able to do it in a quarter of an hour.”

“Edouard gets back to work. After further improvements, it takes only about ten minutes to change a tire. “From now on,” declares the triumphant new boss of the Carmes factory, “a flat tire is no longer a disaster but a mere incident.””

“In Clermont, it’s panic. No tire manufactured, no bike, no racer. The two brothers go to see the favorite of the event, the Bordeaux native Jiel-Laval. Impossible to sign a contract with him, he is already racing on Clément velocipedes and Dunlop glued tires. Disappointed, they then contact a certain Charles Terront, a racer who had his moment of glory. Terront agrees to come out of retirement and participate in this unprecedented race. But Duncan, his British “manager,” opposes it.”

“on August 20, journalist Pierre Giffard from the Petit Journal, the most read and influential daily newspaper of the time, organizes a great race for velocipedes over the Paris-Brest-Paris distance: twelve hundred kilometers! The event is scheduled to start fifteen days later, on Sunday, September 6. New correspondence exchange between the two brothers: André: “That would make a fantastic launch. We need to win it.” Edouard: “The deadline is too short, we will never be ready.” André: “We are the only ones with a detachable. It’s an advantage we have and we may never find it again. There are no deadlines to hold us back. Figure it out.””

“The two brothers stop at a tobacconist, buy two sheets of stamped paper (“success is often made of these small details,” the House would later comment). They invite Terront to lunch, treat him royally, and after liquors and a cigar, propose that he try the “Michelin detachable.” Three hours later, convinced or still half dazed, Terront signs the contract.”