Full speed ahead Michelin

full speed ahead

Michelin is the second largest tyre manufacturer in the world and an innovation leader. Recognising the value of business partnerships, the company recently awarded its top performing supliers for contributing to the Group’s global success and growth. Romana Moares reports.

Michelin, the world’s leading tyre manufacturer with over 14 per cent of the market, is dedicated to enhancing its clients’ mobility, designing and distributing the most suitable tires, services and solutions for its clients’ needs and developing hightechnology materials that serve the mobility industry. Headquartered in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Michelin is present in 170 countries, has 114,100 employees and operates 70 production facilities which together produced 187 million tyres in 2017.

World leader in innovation

Michelin supplies tires for all types of vehicles – cars, vans, trucks, buses, farm machinery, earthmovers, mining and handling equipment, tramways, metros, aircraft, motorcycles, scooters and bicycles. This ability to deliver effective solutions in response to widely varying expectations and usage patterns, depending on the country or region, has positioned the group at the forefront of every one of these segments.

Innovation remains the key to Michelin’s success and the company intends to remain the most innovative company in its sector. The goal is to innovate better and faster so that it maintains its lead over the competition and delivers solutions that are increasingly effective and competitive, and perfectly suited to the challenges of mobility. A staff of 6600 people on three continents, an annual R&D budget of close to €640 million and a portfolio of over 2000 patent families give Michelin an unrivalled capacity for innovation in the tire industry.

One of the main lines of Michelin’s strategy is to use technology and innovation to make its products and services stand out, so that it can consolidate its leadership and meet its customers’ needs as effectively as possible. More than 20 years ago, the Group achieved a major breakthrough that made its tires more energy efficient. Today, it is the global leader in low-energy tires and a trailblazer in the functionality economy, which consists in selling services or the use of a product rather than selling the product itself.

Valued partnerships

Given that purchasing costs represent more than 60 per cent of the Group’s revenue, the high quality of the relationships Michelin enjoys with its suppliers is seen as a key contributing factor to its success.

Every two years, the company announces its best performing suppliers – the Michelin Supplier Awards are the result of a robust evaluation process which places the emphasis on excellence. The 2018 Suppliers Awards ceremony took place on the evening of Thursday, October 25, at the ‘Aventure Michelin’ in ClermontFerrand, France. The awards were presented to representatives of the winning companies by Jean-Dominique Senard, President and Managing General Partner of the Michelin Group, and three members of the Group Executive Committee.

At the 4th edition of its Supplier Awards, Michelin has recognised five of its best suppliers with awards for 2018. In the field of Raw Materials Purchasing, the winners were Belgium-based BEKAERT, founded in 1880, a global market leader in the field of steel wire transformation and coating technologies; and also Belgium-based SOLVAY, created in 1863, a world leader in the chemicals industry.

In the field of Industrial Purchasing the winners were HIMILE, a Chinese company that has become an international player in three major areas (namely tyre mould machines, high-end mechanical parts, and equipment for the oil and gas industries); and VMI, a Dutch company established in 1945 supplying tyre production and rubber cutting machinery.

And finally, in the field of Services Purchasing, Michelin presented the award to South Carolina-based Human Technologies Inc (HTI), founded in May 1999 and one of the biggest recruitment and human resources companies in the southeast of the USA.

Global organisation

On March 16, 2017 Michelin launched a new reorganisation project to reinforce its growth. The objective is to meet new customer expectations, improve satisfaction, simplify the Group’s operating methods and accelerate its digital technology. This new organisation will encourage close relations with customers all over the world and will focus on recruiting highly skilled professionals in high-tech and digital equipment.

In pursuing its ambitious objectives for 2020, and as a signatory of the UN Global Compact and official partner of the COP climate conference, Michelin aims to strengthen its leadership in sustainable mobility and become one of the world’s top-performing companies in fulfilling all of its commitments to responsibility. Integrated into every project and cascaded to every team, the ambitions for 2020 express Michelin’s commitment to building growth over the long term and helping to address societal challenges by putting its values of respect into practice, thus continuing its stragety to stay at the forefront in its sector. n