http://www.cummins.com/na/pages/en/m...ins_leader.cfm


J. Irwin Miller: Business Leader, Social Reformer, Visionary


Joseph Irwin Miller, 95, will be eulogized as a great business leader, social activist and philanthropist whose influence will continue well into the 21st century.

He built Cummins from a family business into a Fortune 500 company with more than 24,000 employees in 137 countries and $6 billion in annual sales. He transformed his hometown of Columbus into a city of architectural wonders, earning it the nickname the Athens of the Prairie.

He embraced social reform. As president of the National Council of Churches from 1960 to 1963, he shaped the council into one of the strongest supporters of the civil rights movement. He helped organize the 1963 civil rights march on Washington and was one of three church leaders to organize the National Conference on Race and Religion that same year.

He advised Presidents both in the United States and abroad, from John F. Kennedy to Nelson Mandela. He received more than 20 honorary degrees from some of the most prestigious universities in the country and numerous awards, including membership in Phi Beta Kappa and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1967, Esquire ran his profile on the magazine's cover with the headline: "This man ought to be the next President of the United States."

For tens of thousands of Cummins employees, Mr. Miller's championing of fairness and equal opportunity and his unswerving commitment to integrity may be his greatest legacy.

Long-time employees like to talk about a corporate measure used during the late 1970s. It was described as the Irwin Miller Transparency Test. Mr. Miller's theory was that if an individual was willing to explain to the local minister what he or she was doing, then it passed the transparency test and could "stand the light of day." It was a good guide for getting through tough times.

His desire to practice what he preached can be found in an excerpt from a 1945 memo to the Company's Executive Committee when he wrote the following:

"We understand the fact that we must give a machine the best care and the best treatment if we are to receive from it the best work. We have sometimes shied away from the similar fact that we must give a person the best care and the best treatment if we are to receive from him the best work."

The employees' appreciation of Mr. Miller was reaffirmed at the April 1997 Cummins shareholders' meeting when an emotional Conrad Bowling, the then president of the Diesel Workers Union, paid tribute to the retiring executive. He said:

"You were at the top of the company with lots of important strategic world issues vying for your attention, yet you always had time for those of us on the shop floor dealing with the issues of today's production. We could talk to you, and we knew you would listen. You came to our gatherings, and we knew that you cared."

Mr. Miller's personal philosophy about the equality of all individuals is best characterized in this oft-quoted remark he made in 1983. "In the search for character and commitment, we must rid ourselves of our inherited, even cherished biases and prejudices. Character, ability and intelligence are not concentrated in one sex over the other, nor in persons with certain accents or in certain races or in persons holding degrees from some universities over others. When we indulge ourselves in such irrational prejudices, we damage ourselves most of all and ultimately assure ourselves of failure in competition with those more open and less biased."

Mr. Miller was born in Columbus, Indiana, on May 26, 1909, to Hugh Thomas Miller, a college professor and politician, and Nettie Irwin Sweeney. His sister, Elizabeth Clementine Miller, was born in 1905. The two grew up in the family home on Fifth Street and enjoyed lively dinner conversations, which frequently turned to politics.

The young Mr. Miller also spent many hours in the workshop of Clessie Cummins, the diesel engine promoter who founded Cummins Engine Company in 1919 and who had been the family chauffeur. The family invested heavily in the Cummins engine, with W. G. Miller, the uncle of Mr. Miller, serving as one of the principles and a member of the Board of the newly created manufacturing entity.

With degrees from Yale (1931) and Oxford (1933) universities and following a brief apprenticeship with a family-owned grocery chain in San Francisco, Mr. Miller went to work for Cummins in 1934 as the company's second general manager.

In 1942 Mr. Miller was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Navy Air Corps, where he served aboard the carrier Langley. He saw action in the Marshall Islands, Truk and New Guinea, but was called home to assume the role of executive vice president of Cummins Engine. At the time, the Company was engaged in important wartime production building engines for cargo trucks.

In the spring of 1943, Mr. Miller married Xenia R. Simons, a Columbus resident and Cummins employee. The two became parents of five children: Margaret, Catherine, Elizabeth, Hugh Thomas II and William Irwin.

During the 1940s and 1950s, the Company's primary strategy was set forth by Mr. Miller. He was named President in 1945 and Chairman of the Board in 1951. Under his direction, the Company set a high priority on research that would come up with new diesel technology, even if it meant obsolescing the company's own products. Second, Cummins worked to reduce costs, while maintaining high product standards. Third, the Company created a national network of independent distributors through which it could develop and maintain a close relationship with customers.

Using this blueprint, Cummins sales increased from $20 million in 1946 to more than $100 million in just a decade. In 1956 the company launched its first overseas plant in Scotland. In the 1950s and 1960s, two presidents ran the company within the broad guidelines established by Mr. Miller, and by 1967 Cummins had cornered 50 percent of the diesel engine market.

Except for one brief period, Mr. Miller's office was not located in Cummins Corporate Office Building. Instead, he used other nearby locations, including the Irwin Bank, the family-owned business founded in the 1800s.

In addition to helping direct the business of the diesel engine company, Mr. Miller realized that for Columbus to prosper it needed to offer an enhanced quality of life and cultural advantages. To that end, he directed the Cummins Engine Foundation, in the 1950s and again in the 1960s, to start paying the fees of promising young architects who were commissioned by Columbus to design public buildings, including schools.

Six of the buildings that resulted from this effort are National Historic Landmarks. Sixty other buildings help sustain the Bartholomew County capital seat's reputation as a showcase of modern architecture.

During his lifetime, Mr. Miller received numerous awards, appointments to influential national boards and acclaim for the corporation's good deeds. Yet, his writings reflected his feeling that "we should be doing more."

Mr. Miller served as Honorary Chairman of Cummins Engine Company, Director of Irwin Financial Corporation and Irwin Management Company, Inc. He also served on numerous other boards and committees including those of the Ford Foundation, the World Council of Churches, American Telephone and Telegraph, The Equitable Life Assurance Society, Chemical State Bank, New York City and the Yale Corporation.

In addition, he served as an emeritus trustee of the Museum of Modern Art; Chairman of the Special Committee on U. S. Trade with Easter European Countries and the Soviet Union; Chairman of the United Nations Commission on Multinational Corporations; Trustee, National Humanities Center; Trustee, Carnegie Institution of Washington.

He was a member of the North Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) of Columbus.

In addition to his wife, Xenia, whom he married on Feb. 5, 1943, Mr. Miller is survived by daughters Margaret I. Miller of Washington, D.C.; Catherine G. Miller of Hamden, Conn. And Elizabeth G. Miller of Pound Ridge, N.Y.; sons Hugh Th. Miller of Lake Angelus, Mich., and William I. Miller of Columbus, Ind.; and 10 grandchildren.

Visitation will be from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. Wednesday (8/18) at North Christian Church in Columbus, IN. A memorial service will be held at 2:00 p.m. Saturday (8/21) at the church.

 

RIP Mr. Miller.

The days of paternalistic relations between employer and employee are gone. A loss to us all

 

May he rest in peace knowing that:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Fire up the Cummins Generator and Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, and saw that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Well, thats how I read it anyway.

Rich

 

Good thing it wasn't a International diesel generator or we would all still be in the dark.

 

A giant among men, they don't make them like that anymore, too bad.