François Michelin

"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.”"

"Until the “Monory liberation,” the head of Clermont-Ferrand continued to complain about the damage caused by price controls and lamented the speed limits on roads decided without consultation. In August 1976, he set out to denounce the reform of the company and the taxation of capital gains. In June 1978, in front of his shareholders, he opposed the project of employee participation in company management, which “risks undermining the authority of managers” and leads “inevitably to the establishment of a parallel hierarchy that would have the opportunity to introduce dissent, would cause the loss of a great deal of time and, more than anything else, would set men against each other.” The company sent a lengthy note to the Ministry of Labor to demonstrate the futility of granting powers to unions that they reject. When the Nixon administration took measures — of questionable constitutionality, as will be seen later — to prevent Michelin tires manufactured in Canada from entering the United States, François Michelin discouraged the Élysée from intervening. Everyone has their own competencies and areas of action."

"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.”"

"“My job,” said François Michelin to his colleagues, “is to make sure that everything done in the House, everything you do, is done well. It’s about ensuring that throughout the factory, the fundamental imperatives of respecting the customer, serving the customer, and striving to find the best way to satisfy them are well understood. When things are complicated and I’m not sure how to decide, it’s to that compass that I ask where the north is… Regarding everything you see around you, you must ask yourself what the customer would think about how we use the money they give us. Each time something is wasted, unnecessarily complicated, inconsiderately dispersed, or time is taken, we must hear the customer reproach us for selling our tires too expensive.” And to clarify: “If the customers are satisfied, the Boss knows he can make the House thrive and maintain the shareholders’ trust.”"

"In December, Citroën is absorbed purely and simply. And Michelin becomes a shareholder with about ten percent of the Peugeot-Citroën group. François Rollier and Jean-Claude Tournand return to Clermont-Ferrand. This time, definitively, François Michelin cuts ties. The manufacturer no longer carries the automotive burden while remaining Citroën’s exclusive supplier. And for Peugeot, a majority supplier (about sixty percent of its supplies). Michelin can finally concentrate its efforts on what it knows and what it is made for: tires[41](private://read/01jkqdqdgs7t399cyecbezrhj0/#ftn_fn41)."

"The Company is large, but the customer is its prophet. In 1976, François Michelin sends his best wishes to his staff: “For the House I have only one wish to express That everyone, wherever they are in the factory Acts by putting themselves in the place Of the one who will buy the product of their work Let’s think that the House must be built every day. Good work, Happy New Year, Good health to all.”"

"Sears Roebuck, the largest American retail and mail order chain (eight hundred and fifty stores and a catalog distributed in eighty million copies), offered Michelin in 1965 to sell its tires, because it refused, it explained, “to have cheap tires like its competitors and instead wants to consider the clientele.” Sears set only one condition: the Michelin car and truck tires it would distribute not only by mail order but also in its shopping centers must bear the group’s brand in this field: “Allstate.” To conclude the deal, Andy Bush, the buyer responsible for tires at Sears, came to Clermont-Ferrand. Before giving his agreement, François Michelin requested a fifteen-day reflection period. The company had never, unlike many of its competitors—especially American ones—accepted selling tires under a brand other than its own. Ultimately François Michelin accepted. America is well worth a mass. Sears is the third American business in the replacement tire market (after Goodyear and Firestone). It sells about ten percent of all tires purchased by American motorists. And one in four families has an open account with Sears."

"He is twenty-nine years old when, on May 28, 1955, Robert Puiseux calls him to management. The son-in-law of Edouard Michelin — “the invisible man of French industry” as the newspapers call him — is preparing to pass the baton, as the “Boss” had asked him to do. And it is to François Michelin, the grandson, that the responsibility of the House and that of the dynasty will go. He has the required qualities and, to the core, the house spirit. Robert Puiseux will mentor him for another four years before completely handing over to him in 1959 the power, with its challenges and responsibilities. Both at the head of the Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin, the holding company of the group created in 1951, and its main subsidiary, the Manufacture Française des Pneumatiques Michelin."

"The only solution, François Michelin would often repeat: work, work more, work better."

"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.”"

"François Michelin sets foot in the firm in Colombes in June 1965 by purchasing the shareholding of the American group B.F. Goodrich, which had started to open a subsidiary in France as early as 1910. A somewhat convoluted financial operation, at the end of which it is noted that Michelin holds, through the Société des procédés industriels modernes and Bergougnan—two businesses it controls—over 25 percent of Kléber, the second-largest French tire company and the first in manufactured rubber."

"François Michelin also knows that he still has much to do to consolidate the foundations of his own house. Everywhere in nearly all the markets that Bibendum has conquered through sheer effort, Bridgestone, the new Japanese tire giant, threatens to establish itself. The Japanese brand supplies half of the Japanese automobile production, which became the world’s largest in 1980 and 1981. In the United States, it quickly delivered to Michelin’s customers at a time when Michelin was out of stock. It plans to purchase the Firestone plant in Nashville, Tennessee, and increase its production capacity to 3,000 truck tires per day in 1983. In Europe, it is laying the groundwork, making contacts, and beginning to supply Scandinavia, Great Britain, and West Germany. It, too, is eyeing Formula 1. The result: a wild growth, as fast or faster than the French group over the past five years, with revenues of three billion dollars in 1980 (nearly seventy percent of which was from tires) achieved with only thirty-one thousand employees, gross self-financing margins of twenty-five percent, and a net profit nearly twice that of Michelin in 1980. Bridgestone, in recent years, has also surpassed General Tire, Uniroyal, BF Goodrich, Continental, Dunlop, and Pirelli to occupy the fourth place worldwide. A formidable challenger."

"After long hesitation about what action to take, François Michelin provided some support to the ailing company. Executives from the parent company were “injected” into Bergougnan. Technicians came to finalize the development of various products: steel-reinforced conveyor belts called “Bergacier,” offshore hoses also with steel reinforcement, etc. However, the installations as a whole were outdated, management was too precarious, and Michelin did not intend to indefinitely burden itself with this enterprise, which could offer nothing in return. And Bergougnan, to keep its factories running, had engaged, at the beginning of the sixties, in a price war that greatly troubled its competitor Kléber. The circumstances were therefore favorable for François Michelin and Paul Huvelin, then head of Kléber, to meet."

"3° The incursion, forced and constrained, into Citroën was only justified insofar as, according to the phrase attributed to François Michelin, “the automobile is just an accessory of the tire.” It only remained possible as long as the Javel firm could grow by its own means and did not hinder tire development. The day it became apparent “as dead weight on its flanks,” Michelin set out to get rid of it."

"6th The law of silence. The affairs of the company do not concern anyone outside the company. It is its private life. Any indiscretion would be suicidal. A good employee is a silent employee. “It takes our engineers ten years to produce a new tire or develop a new machine,” explains François Michelin, “but five minutes are enough to understand the process used, hence to copy it and potentially put our employees out of work.”"

"“I don’t have a brain intelligent enough to lead different activities in parallel,” François Michelin stated before the editorial team of Usine Nouvelle. “If diversification became necessary, I wouldn’t be the man for the job. I would leave to make way for someone more competent.”"

"“He is constantly on the go,” explains one of his executives. “He likes to go into the field, talk with the men who make the product or are in contact with the customers. Probably to maintain a permanent state of general mobilization, but more likely still to bypass the screens, know the problems directly as they arise.” François Michelin, the provincial, travels more than the average Parisian bosses."

"Until the “Monory liberation,” the head of Clermont-Ferrand continued to complain about the damage caused by price controls and lamented the speed limits on roads decided without consultation. In August 1976, he set out to denounce the reform of the company and the taxation of capital gains. In June 1978, in front of his shareholders, he opposed the project of employee participation in company management, which “risks undermining the authority of managers” and leads “inevitably to the establishment of a parallel hierarchy that would have the opportunity to introduce dissent, would cause the loss of a great deal of time and, more than anything else, would set men against each other.” The company sent a lengthy note to the Ministry of Labor to demonstrate the futility of granting powers to unions that they reject. When the Nixon administration took measures — of questionable constitutionality, as will be seen later — to prevent Michelin tires manufactured in Canada from entering the United States, François Michelin discouraged the Élysée from intervening. Everyone has their own competencies and areas of action."

"At the center of the system: François Michelin, the “Boss” with, it is said, one and a half percent of the capital of the business, the omnipresent leader of this gigantic “red orchestra” of tire manufacturing driven by the concern to maintain its cohesion, spurred by the ambition to be as quickly as possible, the world’s leading firm while maintaining the quality of its productions, and its technical lead. He is the one who dictates the tables of the law, he who ensures their application everywhere and at all times."

"And the products that bear the signature of the House — and the name of the Boss — engage its responsibility. They must be flawless. “We are not here to make money,” declares François Michelin to his staff, as his grandfather already said. “We are here to make the best tires at the best price.”"

"In 1976, François Michelin sends his best wishes to his staff: “For the House I have only one wish to express That everyone, wherever they are in the factory Acts by putting themselves in the place Of the one who will buy the product of their work Let’s think that the House must be built every day. Good work, Happy New Year, Good health to all.”"

"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.”"

"Well, we’ll see. If François Michelin acquires these 25.2 percent of Kléber’s capital, he intends to, on the other hand, stay on the doorstep. He warned Paul Huvelin and his right-hand man on Avenue Kléber, Manuel Béraldi, that he would leave them completely free rein. No question of “nurturing” the business by providing any technical, industrial, or commercial support. Especially no osmosis between the teams (the Parisian air is not necessarily good for Auvergne lungs). The two firms must remain as foreign to each other as if they were evolving in two different galaxies. There will not even be a Michelin representative on the Kléber board of directors."

"As in Egypt, Bibendum had to wait a long time in front of the door before being authorized to enter the Brazilian market. The first contacts with Brasilia date back, it seems, to 1975. In April of that year, two Michelin executives, Jean Bollotte and Daniel Lejeune, were received by Delfin Netto, former Minister of Economy, then Brazilian ambassador to Paris. The group, they said, would like to build five manufacturing plants on the same site. To do so, Michelin would invest one hundred and sixty million dollars and export a notable portion of its production. At that time, Brazil was still experiencing strong growth. “The truck market,” François Michelin would explain to his shareholders a few years later, “is twice as important as in France. Trucks cover a thousand kilometers a day, and tires last three months.” A new Promised Land."

"François Michelin’s explanation today: “The House paid the price of years of war where it was necessary, instead of thinking about the tire the customer needed, to hastily manufacture the planes the country needed. We had fallen behind the competition. The years when we couldn’t focus on the customer were terribly difficult to catch up, and when the crisis came, we were not ready. We were not ourselves.”"

"Can Michelin for that matter celebrate? Not at all. In 1976, François Michelin told his shareholders that his operations in the United States would bring profits within two or three years. “I am,” he said, “in the same situation as Boeing at the end of the fifties when Lockheed was raking in profits but Boeing had machines ready to roll out in its hangars.” In the early eighties, profits were still awaited (the MTC likely lost about fifty million dollars in 1980)."

"François Michelin is a man who thinks about tires and the company twenty-four hours a day. “My greatest wish,” he explains, “is not to damage what has been done previously in the company.” He admits an immense debt of gratitude to those who preceded him. He only wants to challenge what has become obsolete because the times have changed. Not the temple whose columns were forged by his grandfather. He is not fond of new faces: “One only works well with people one knows and in fields one knows.” All professions are difficult, but the tire business is probably more so than others."

"The only solution, François Michelin would often repeat: work, work more, work better."

"The system is motivating. “Would you, asks François Michelin, go on a plane piloted by remote control? When a pilot must save their own skin, they simultaneously save that of their passengers.”"

"The Company is large, but the customer is its prophet. In 1976, François Michelin sends his best wishes to his staff: “For the House I have only one wish to express That everyone, wherever they are in the factory Acts by putting themselves in the place Of the one who will buy the product of their work Let’s think that the House must be built every day. Good work, Happy New Year, Good health to all.”"

"How can it be explained that from 1945 to 1970, everyone believed in this paternalism from another era? What is the mystery of its success? Isn’t it surprising that, unlike François Michelin who led a monastic life among his employees, Boussac managed, from a distance and with just an annual visit to his factories, to maintain a level of devotion and loyalty unique in the history of French industry, which withstood all the upheavals of recent years? This feat can be explained by the perfect symbiosis that existed between Boussac and his social director, Jean-Marie Compas. There lies the key to this paternalism, successful because it had a genuine face."

"François Michelin, dressed in a uniform smock, to conform to the mold, or in an old “imper” when he leaves the factory in his beige 2 CV, wants each member of his community of 120,000 soldier-monks to reach the end of their abilities. He delegates responsibilities, sometimes even allows too much freedom to his collaborators, encourages individual involvement, and “pushes” a type of “producer” man."

"How can it be explained that from 1945 to 1970, everyone believed in this paternalism from another era? What is the mystery of its success? Isn’t it surprising that, unlike François Michelin who led a monastic life among his employees, Boussac managed, from a distance and with just an annual visit to his factories, to maintain a level of devotion and loyalty unique in the history of French industry, which withstood all the upheavals of recent years? This feat can be explained by the perfect symbiosis that existed between Boussac and his social director, Jean-Marie Compas. There lies the key to this paternalism, successful because it had a genuine face."