The global leader of tyres has chosen Piemonte since 1906 for the production and the development of new innovative projects.

 Leader in the mobility sector, Michelin designs, produces and distributes tyres, offering innovative services and solutions to improve mobility and transport efficiency in a sustainable way. The company also provides digital services, maps and guides to make its customers' journeys and movements unique, besides developing high-tech materials used in numerous fields. Headquartered in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Michelin is present in 175 countries employing more than 132,200 people and operating in more than 60 tire manufacturing plants.
Established in Italy since 1906, Michelin is today, thanks to over 3,700 employees, the leading tyre manufacturer in the country with, among others, 2 important production plants in Piemonte - in Cuneo (car tyres) and Alessandria (truck tyres) - and the legal head office in Torino where a semi-finished production activity and an important logistics center are also located.

The project in Piemonte

Michelin's first industrial plant outside France was in Torino which produced its first tyre in 1907. Since then, Michelin has become increasingly rooted in Italy and particularly in Piemonte. It is a founding member of the Torino Employers’ Association and actively participates in the socio-economic development of the region.
There are several strategic factors that contributed to attracting Michelin's first investments in Piemonte. Among these, the presence of important vehicle manufacturers and the geographical proximity to France stand out. Over the years, the relationship with local communities and institutions and the possibility of counting on qualified personnel have made it possible to make the most out of the investments made by the Group.

Today Michelin has mainly concentrated its activities in Piemonte where it has also recently developed numerous new innovative projects, counting on the support of regional and national funding.
Among these, the ALESTAR project of the Alessandria plant, co-financed by Regione Piemonte (Regional Government), has made it possible to develop a range of innovative tyres characterized by the achievement of the A labeling for rolling resistance and road holding during homologation. The development of these tyres required a series of investments in R&D and structural process innovations, particularly in machinery, plant flexibility and new equipment, which led to a clear improvement in the quality of the tyre. Over 10 engineers were hired for this project.

The Alessandria plant, together with Cuneo’s, was also involved in the OCTOPUS project that is included in the transition towards the "intelligent factory" strategic line traced by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development. OCTOPUS embraced various technological areas, including integrated maintenance management, quality and logistics management for "Zero-Defect" production, industrial process supervision and control systems and ICT to enhance and share knowledge within factories. For this project, 10 professionals with High Apprenticeship contracts were included.

Finally, the 4ASSI project had the objective of strengthening the competitiveness of tyre manufacturing in Piemonte thanks to a comprehensive synergy between SMEs and Large Companies, exploiting the skills of the Politecnico di Torino and working on improving the productivity and quality of manufacturing through new processes resulting from Industry 4.0 technologies. The technological areas involved were: Additive Manufacturing development, vulcanization development using innovative 100% electrically powered presses, development of digital technologies for quality control using artificial vision, development of technologies for improving tire quality such as aesthetics (cleaning process of the baking moulds) and road behavior (process of measuring the dynamic characteristics of the tyre). The project allowed 3 professionals to be hired with High Apprenticeship contracts.

Thanks to these investments, Italian sites have reach a good competitiveness inside Michelin Group. A lot of projects in order to develop new products and processes are under realization. I.E. in Cuneo site the tire segments (all season, winter and summer) for next generation tires are under development. These segments represent more than 70% of Michelin volume in Europe.
About process a lot of new technologies are under development and they will be introduced in the new tires generation. Michelin invests a lot of money in Italian sites and they are becoming a very important center for product and process innovation for all the Group

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