Internship at Michelin
First of all, I would like to Introduce the company of Michelin. This is the biggest tyre making company in the world. First I would like to talk about the history of Michelin. Two brothers, Éduard and André Michelin, ran a rubber factory in Clermont-Ferrand, France. One day, a cyclist whose pneumatic tyre needed repair turned up at the factory. The tyre was glued to the rim, and it took over three hours to remove and repair the tyre, which then needed to be left overnight to dry. The next day, Édouard Michelin took the repaired bicycle into the factory yard to test. After only a few hundred metres, the tyre failed. Despite the setback, Édouard was enthusiastic about the pneumatic tyre, and he and his brother worked on creating their own version, one which did not need to be glued to the rim. Michelin was incorporated on 28 May 1888. In 1891, it took out its first patent for a removable pneumatic tyre which was used by Charles Terront to win the world's first long distance cycle race, the 1891 Paris-Brest-Paris.
Michelin has made a number of innovations to tyres, including in 1946 the radia tyre (then known as the "X" tyre). It was developed with the front-wheel-drive Citroen Traction Avant and Citroen 2CV in mind. Michelin had bought the then bankrupt Citroën in the 1930s. As of August 2008, this tyre is still available for the 2CV.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Michelin operated large rubber plantations in Vietnam. The Vietnamese workers were exploited pitilessly and brutally, which led to the famous labor movement Phu Rieng Do.
In 1988, Michelin acquired the tyre and rubber manufacturing divisions of the American B.F. Goodrich Company founded in 1870. This included the Norwood, North Carolina manufacturing plant which supplies tyres to the U.S. Space Shuttle Program. Two years later, it bought Uniroyal, Inc., founded in 1892 as the United States Rubber Company. Uniroyal Australia had already been bought by Bridgestone in 1980....