Clermont-Ferrand

"This work of preparation for constantly different tasks can only be done in the motherland. Clermont-Ferrand is the place where “in a perpetual work of training, the common know-how” of engineers, technicians, workers, salespeople, managers is forged. In the capital of Auvergne exclusively, far from the Parisian viruses that could contaminate it. “The day the House leaves its walls, it will lose its soul,” says François Michelin. And the basic training—the famous Michelin “internship”—which targets sharp minds and strong characters more than well-filled heads, consists of addressing a concrete problem. “Engineers who enter the factory are assigned to address questions whose solutions are not found in books or speculative reflections, but in the field. They must go and find them there, and for that, know how to look, listen, spot a detail, cross-check information, ask questions that allow going further, change perspectives, and reduce the problem to a set of well-established facts upon which one can finally reason and build. And if reasoning leaves room for several solutions, it is ultimately experience that will decide.”"

"SINCE the arrival of the socialists in power in France, Michelin has become even more secretive. Roger Quillot, the senator-mayor of Clermont-Ferrand, is at the Ministry of Urban Planning and Housing. Pierre Dreyfus, the former president of Renault — Citroën’s former enemy — is at the Ministry of Industry on Rue de Grenelle. The communist Charles Fiterman, Minister of Transport, intends to favor the SNCF at the expense of road transport. The Communist Party demands to include Michelin on the next list of nationalizable companies. François Michelin, who apparently had little affinity with previous Elysée teams, now resides on his lands, erecting new walls. Last June, before his shareholders, he once again expressed concern about “the gap that often exists between industrial and economic reality and the perception that political circles have of it.” Once again, he went to war against “the scarcity of savings and especially the abusive use of credit, not for the creation of means of production but for financing that is not a source of wealth, such as state deficits, consumer credits, excessive working capital of companies.”"

"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."

"“Since we can no longer sell tires, let’s sell something else,” the Michelins decide. All the materials gathered under the hangars or in the yards, to build a new factory in Cataroux, north of Clermont-Ferrand, accumulate as the construction site is halted. There are already piles of wood, cotton, machines, tons of scrap metal. Selling them would allow for paying salaries. The idea is immediately accepted. The house’s salesmen, the employees—from the janitor to the engineer—hit the roads to sell off all these useless stocks. For cash. The fresh money that comes in saves the company."

"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."

"Imperative instruction: never tell anyone—except the hierarchy—what you know, what you do, or what you prepare. Silence is more than a law; it is a duty. “Reckless chatter,” Edouard had said, “can be costly to the House.” Or again: “Discretion is an essential quality just like honesty and work.” This is true within the company as well as outside working hours. Clermont-Ferrand lives under a pall of silence, in fear of spies and informers."

"And the Michelins, now completely in control of the place, get to work. At all levels, in all areas. Often secretly. Some Bibs, on orders from Clermont-Ferrand, get hired as simple workers to better observe what is happening, diagnose the “leaks” and waste, and prepare the list of “irredeemable” people."

"The philosopher-manager believes only in technology and, as in Clermont, “in fact-finding investigations.” Not in marketing. “Instead of exhausting oneself following tastes and fashions,” he will tell the weekly magazine Entreprise, “we must seek to satisfy the deep and often ignored needs of the public.” In short, making his customers happy without them, even against them. The automobile is a supply market, not a demand market. “A good product, as taught at Quai de Javel and in Clermont-Ferrand, will always find buyers.”"

"First conclusions, first precautions. To prevent the invention, quickly perceived in Clermont-Ferrand as one that will, once peace returns, outclass the Metallic and the Pilot, from falling into enemy hands, all the files are clandestinely routed to Spain and then sent to the United States and Latin America to be safe during the duration of the conflict."

"He knows the Michelins well, since the time when he was chief engineer at Mors, a prestigious client for Clermont-Ferrand, always brilliantly positioned in major international competitions. Like the Michelins, he distinguished himself by participating in the war effort and contributing as an industrialist to victory. The Auvergnats made airplanes and bomb launchers, he made shells. Millions of shells."

"In Clermont, orders soon start to come in. The Carmes factory hires, expands, and equips itself with more recent tools. The bankers now relent. The rubber suppliers deliver without hesitation. The former student of Bouguereau, who gives up any idea of returning to his brushes, tackles the most thankless tasks: research, manufacturing, sales, management. He accepts—this will be his only concession—the presidency of the Véloce Club of Auvergne that is offered to him. But he will be seen less and less often leaving Clermont-Ferrand. The factory already, nothing but the factory, everything for the factory."

"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."

"In Clermont, the engineers of the company do not want to hear about the “Salmon 200 HP” engines sent by the Ministry of War to equip the Breguet-Michelin. They demand the most powerful and lightest engines possible “to rise quickly, fly long and with certainty.” The only ones matching what the Michelin people want are those manufactured in Billancourt by Louis Renault. Moreover, the planes need to be equipped with bomb launchers and sights capable of carrying four hundred kilos of projectiles with a range of four hundred kilometers. These proposals are finally accepted. Very quickly, André Michelin obtains the demobilization of the engineer responsible for tire manufacturing who is in Auxerre. He will organize, in record time, the production for the Minister of War. Five versions of these Breguet-Michelin will be studied, and two models—equipped with Renault engines—will be mass-produced. When the war ends, seven planes will leave the workshops of Clermont-Ferrand each day. A fantastic pace."

"With thirty thousand employees — one-fifth of the population of Clermont-Ferrand — gathered over a few dozen square kilometers, Clermont-Ferrand is today, after Sochaux-Montbéliard, the largest industrial conurbation in France. A concentration comparable to those that the German giants of chemistry or metallurgy have built on the banks of the Rhine but with entirely different organizational methods and mentalities. “Michelinville,” buzzing with uncontrollable rumors, crossed by deep currents difficult to manage, has today become ungovernable. But how to successfully carry out the necessary decentralization of the capital of the empire — and at the same time, the modernization of certain workshops — knowing that Auvergne, according to Pr François Perroux, is seen as the “Michelin Region”?"

"At the armistice, Michelin will be able to boast of having manufactured in its factories and with a female workforce, “one thousand eight hundred eighty-four planes — one hundred forty-seven of which will have been delivered to the American army — eight thousand six hundred bomb launchers and three hundred forty-two thousand bombs of various calibers, twenty-seven thousand seven hundred of which to the American army. Furthermore, Clermont-Ferrand will have manufactured “three hundred thousand rubberized coats, five hundred thousand rubberized gloves, five hundred thousand feed bags, two hundred fifty thousand tents, two hundred thousand sleeping bags.” Bibendum will have earned the appreciation of the “rookies.” An investment for the future."

"At Quai de Javel, the new owner makes sharp cuts. Six thousand layoffs—five thousand workers and one thousand white-collar workers—are decided by Pierre Michelin. No more family scions (those called “hickeys”), no more secretaries overly concerned with their elegance, no more workers whimsical about their schedules, no more expenses that aren’t absolutely necessary, no more adventurous epics, no more fanfare. André Citroën’s closest collaborators are thanked and let go. The parent company in Clermont-Ferrand continues to send—often in “submarines”—some of its trusted men to reorganize the business from top to bottom, take back control of the staff, and identify overly disruptive unionists."

"The survivors of the initial hiring tests are subjected to a battery of assessments. Future travelers are asked to build a bridge over the Tiretaine—a small river that runs through Clermont-Ferrand—to identify the best candidates. Future managers, summoned at five in the morning to a woodworking shop, are given a “dovetail fitting” to complete in three hours, to point out to those who fail the test that it would have been better to spend half an hour thinking before grabbing their tools. A law student candidate is asked to specify the difference between a ladder and stairs, to repeatedly catch the stick thrown at them to see where their catching hand lands, and their reflexes are tested by maneuvering a tracing point to follow a rapidly moving line."

"In all establishments, American executives, engineers, and technicians have been required to spend time in Clermont-Ferrand— with their families, if necessary — to breathe the air of the Maison, learn its methods, and measure its state of technical advancement. These “training” sessions lasted from three to eighteen months."

"Seizing the pretext of a mistake made by his advertising agency, R.L. Dupuy (which had let a “typo” slip through in a promotional text), he parts ways with them and sets up his own agency, tylONSIE&R ßOiißjSAQ which soon employs 100 people. In the three floors of galleries of the building on rue Poissonnière, he sets up a permanent exhibition hall of all his articles; he invites at his own expense buyers-transformers who present models made with the fabric that Boussac had provided them for free. He decides to create traveling fashion shows throughout France, with collection presentations. The inhabitants of Brive and Clermont-Ferrand had never seen anything like it! Two traveling “circuses,” comprising a tour leader, window dresser, speaker, decorators, pianists, models, and dressers, totaling about twenty people, continuously present the collections to the provinces, followed by the commercial ranks who take orders. The textile world is in turmoil. Rhodiaceta is trying to imitate the formula."