Michelin’s Product‑as‑a‑Service Evolution: IoT‑Powered Tire Solutions

In today’s marketplace, delivering products as services often yields greater value and profitability.

In the automotive and trucking sectors, this shift is already visible. Truck makers such as Daimler and Volvo Trucks are expanding their remote‑diagnostics and telematics offerings, while traditional tire giants—including Continental, Bridgestone, Pirelli, and Michelin—have broadened their fleet‑management and connected‑tire services.

Michelin is embracing this trend by diversifying its core tire business with an expanding portfolio of services.

Senior vice president Ralph Dimmena, a finalist for IoT World Leader of the Year, explains that the journey begins with identifying “use cases with an initial cohort of customers to understand how the proposed solution works, what you’re delivering, and the customer experience.”

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Dimenna’s approach echoes design thinking: uncover core user challenges, then iterate through testing and prototyping to refine solutions.

For Michelin, this research has led to a distance‑based tire-as‑a‑service model. Smart tires on aircraft track landings to determine replacement schedules. In Formula‑E racing, connected tires enable precise air‑pressure monitoring. For mining trucks, IoT sensors measure cumulative wear from heavy ore loads, allowing technicians to replace tires only when needed.

The concept of selling products as services is not new—jet‑engine manufacturers have long offered “power‑by‑the‑hour” contracts since the 1960s. Today, the steady maturation of IoT technology is pushing the model into mainstream adoption. “We participate very heavily in this move to a subscription economy,” Dimenna says. “It allows us to expand with existing customers while reaching new demographics,” citing a McKinsey article on recurring‑revenue models for hardware and software.

The subscription model also gives Michelin the ability to provide mining operators with proactive failure prevention. Trucks with 450‑to‑500‑ton tires can generate heat and fail under heavy loads. IoT sensors monitor temperature and pressure, enabling operators to slow speed before overheating occurs. “In a mine a few miles deep, the difference between 35 km/h and 40 km/h is significant,” Dimenna notes. Tire failure can cause hours of downtime; by knowing the exact risk of failure, operators can schedule tire changes alongside other maintenance tasks.

As autonomous vehicles become more common in mining, real‑time tire metrics become even more critical. Without a driver to feel anomalies, operators rely on instant data streams back to the control center, allowing rapid intervention when a problem arises.

Developing new service offerings is not without challenges. “It can be as simple as asking, ‘Why can’t we continually get a signal at every point in the mine from the connected tires?’” Dimenna explains. “In Formula‑E, we ask, ‘Do we have the correct integration with all race teams to ensure real‑time, actionable data?’”

Studying small customer cohorts and integrating new technologies has taught Michelin how to operate connected solutions at scale. “When we expand to larger, more complex scenarios, we rely on that experience,” Dimenna says. “While not every company needs to follow the exact path, for a manufacturer moving into IoT and connected mobility, this method has proven highly effective.”