Video: Michelin exec encourages industry to embrace innovation

AKRON—David Stafford is excited about the future of the tire industry, but he cautioned that companies within it can't get too complacent.

With many chances for opportunity on the horizon, Stafford warned attendees of the International Tire Exhibition & Conference in Akron on Sept. 13 that those companies that choose not to embrace innovation will watch as others take their place.

The chief human resources officer for Michelin North America Inc. highlighted a number of developments that will shape the industry for years to come, namely autonomous vehicles and added pressure to be more environmentally efficient.

On top of that, Stafford outlined another challenge the industry faces: producing the employees of the future, the ones who will be needed to help drive this innovation and continue the legacy of tire companies like Michelin.

“Today the challenge to innovate and improve sustainable mobility is more formal than ever,” Stafford said. “The world of transportation is changing rapidly in many other ways. Put simply, the automotive world of today looks like it will most certainly change by tomorrow.”

He joined Michelin in 1984, working in the materials research department at MARC. In 1990, he transferred to the truck tire research and development group at the company's headquarters in France, where he worked for three years. From 1993 to 2002, Stafford was responsible for a number of truck tire product research and development groups both in North America and at the Michelin Group level. He was appointed technical director for Michelin Americas Truck Tires in 2002.

Along with his duties at Michelin, Stafford serves on the Area Commission for Greenville Technical College and on the Advisory Board for the School of Engineering and Science at Clemson University. He earned a bachelor's of science in materials engineering in 1982, and a master's in materials engineering in 1984, both from Virginia Tech.

Stafford's advice is simple: companies should strive to work with firms working on the edge—some of which may even be outside of the tire industry completely—to continue to drive forward.

Taxi fleets such as Uber and Lyft are testing self-driving cars today. Tesla has helped push electric cars to the point where they can drive beyond 200 miles, and Google, a company more known for internet searches, is now partnering up with Detroit 3 auto makers to push the boundaries of mobility.

None of the four companies make tires, yet all are putting their fingerprints all over the industry.

“We take for granted that what we do here today will be there tomorrow,” Stafford said. “We need to be those trend setters. It's important for us to remember that companies like Tesla and Google are also companies of mobility and are moving forward in that way. We are entering a new phase of mobility innovation, one that we have not seen since the early 1900s when the auto first became apparent and widespread in the world that we know. It truly is an exciting time period.”

While autonomous vehicles still may be on the horizon, electric vehicles have arrived, but he said they're anything but new. In fact, electric engines competed with internal combustion engines in the early 1900s. While the internal combustion engine won then, Stafford said electric cars continued to evolve throughout the 1970s and "80s, and now the technology has matured.

Now, in addition to Tesla, Chevrolet and Volkswagen are getting ready to release new electric vehicle models. Stafford said the tire industry must figure out how the needs of electric vehicles will affect what's needed from tire companies. He outlined a few things:

c Tire companies had to provide new solutions for noise damping on these vehicles quickly because they're so much quieter on the road;

c Michelin worked with Tesla years ago and learned a great deal about the tire's impact on the vehicle charge range;

c Electric vehicles have instantaneous high torque, re-creating the need to manage treadwear in unexpected ways; and

c Formula-E, the wholly electric version of Formula-1, provides new opportunities for tire supply.

Stafford said Michelin is the tire supplier for the race series, and it has brought enormous amounts of information to the firm about what it means to manage the vehicle/tire coupling for electric range.

“If we do not embrace the change that is coming at us, others will and will simply bypass us in the very near future,” he said.

Autonomous vehicles are poised to bring different challenges to tire makers. Stafford said things such as handling might become less important because the vehicle will take care of that and the safety elements. But things such as driver experience, noise, comfort, software and digital components might become more important because without having to focus on driving, passengers in the vehicle can use their time in other ways.

He envisioned a world where the tire communicates to the car, which in turn communicates to the user that it needs new tires. The car sends feedback on what kind of tires to buy and the best options in the area. The user then sends the car, by itself, to go get serviced all while the owner doesn't leave the house.

“If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?” Stafford said. “The parallel to that is, if a car drives by itself, how will passengers and occupants really appreciate what we offer to it? If a car drives itself, what will they appreciate in the car that they don't appreciate today? And what won't they care about in the future?”

All of this, he said, has to be done while also striving to continue to become more sustainable.

“We have an important role to play to bring about bringing mobility of goods and services to an increasing number of people around the globe, and we must embrace with passion our responsibility to do that in a way that is sustainable,” Stafford said. “Low-cost solutions, recycled materials and renewable materials are all well within our grip and our range today. We must embrace these and drive those forward because that's what the world expects from us. But the world also wants the mobility that's been promised to them as they reach the middle class.”

People are the key to embracing these new challenges, Stafford said. And companies need to strive to attract, develop and retain a diverse set of employees, ones who can help guide them into these new frontiers.

“The connection I always made, even when I was in technology, is that it's always first about people,” he said, bridging his technical background with his current role as chief human resources officer. “We always like to talk technology, but it's always about people first. Without those great people we would not have the technology we have in our society today.”

Stafford said that while companies need to go out and find new talent, he stressed that at Michelin the people that are there today will not become obsolete. He cited one important characteristic he and his team look for when trying to identify who will fit well with the organization.

“The ability to learn,” Stafford said. “What we know today will change in five and 10 years, certainly. We're looking for people who are willing to adapt and learn very quickly. We're looking for people who embrace a vision of passion and purpose like we believe in. We want people who really want to believe in the things we believe in.

“Many of the people that we have today, like myself, are doing jobs that are totally different from the ones they had when they started 10 years ago. You have to have the ability to re-tool, re-learn and re-skill several times in a career today, much more so than when I came out of college.”

He stressed that this challenge is one of the most important facing manufacturing because the industry as a whole is constantly requiring greater reasoning, critical thinking and analytical skills.

“Just as the first engineers and scientists had to learn about rubber mixing and rubber chemistry, we will have to bring up a new generation of scientists, data analysts and computer engineers that will drive us forward to this next generation of innovation,” Stafford said.