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bring in experts from around the world. As things would have it,
there was too much competition for money and the center was
never built. There was a change in administrations too.”
A Phase II came and all but disappeared. The records are scant
as to what happened, but we know that even though “Design for
the Eighties” faded, its efforts would help lure companies in the
early 1990s, companies with marquee names, companies who
symbolized high technology.
Getting big name companies into South Carolina became
paramount. Dr. JimMorris remembers Governor Carroll Camp-
bell’s (1987-1995) approach to economic development. “Carroll
Campbell,” said Dr. Morris, “wanted the tech system president at
about every meeting he went to with business and industry.”
“Fuji Photo Film, we were fortunate to get them,” said Morris.
“It was a great company for a time in Greenwood and made a
huge difference. Governor Campbell’s work, all over the world
was pretty significant. He knew what to do. He had a team of
people that would go with him to explain the tax structure, but
the first thing he wanted to explain was how am I going to get a
workforce and how will I keep them trained. So it was a wonder-
ful experience to do that, and we enjoyed probably the best suc-
cess, before or since, that eight-year run. It was really productive
and a lot of fun and meant a lot to the people of South Carolina in
terms of their families and jobs. We were, the whole system, was
fortunate during that eight-year period.”
One company Morris, Campbell, et al. spent a lot of time with
was Michelin.
THE SCIENCE OF TIRES
What’s black, round, and gets hotter by the minute? Easy ques-
tion given the title just above. The science of tires: that’s where the
rubber meets the road. “Design for the Eighties” sought to give
the state a high-tech edge in competing for new industry, and it
succeeded. “’Design for the Eighties’ was one of the reasons Mi-
chelin came,” said Ed Zobel, “We could custom-make a program
that fit them like a tailor-made suit.”
Round, rubbery, resilient, and road ready but susceptible to
heat—that’s a tire. “How hard can it be to make a tire?”
Two words sum it up. “Devilishly hard.” And a cautionary
note is in order: the devil is in the details; your life depends on
getting it right. In South Carolina tire manufacturers’ technicians
get it right thanks to training. A complicated science undergirds
the manufacture of tires making exhaustive training paramount.
Variables attend tire performance. Mechanical grip, aerody-
namic grip, the car’s weight pushing the tire against the road,
the force of air pushing tires against the road—all are crucial to
understand. Tire grip is due to friction, and you want as much
friction as possible, but there’s literally a rub. Rub your hands
together for thirty seconds and touch your face. Feel the heat?
Friction creates heat and heat’s not good for tires.
And then there’s the “recipe” of making the tire itself. Varying
the ratio of natural to synthetic rubber, determining how much
sulfur is needed relative to the amount of polymers in the rubber
prove crucial. And processing conditions—temperature, pres-
sure, and duration at which the tire is vulcanized—determines
whether the tire is hard or soft. Sidewall stiffness, cording, these,
and other factors mandate a scientific approach to making tires.
It’s not for dummies.
In the early 1980s, Michelin opened two new plants, one was
in Lexington, South Carolina. Besides that new plant, something
major transpired. In 1988, Michelin opened its new headquar-
ters in Greenville to consolidate operations and manufacturing.
The big loser was New York where Michelin had been since 1950.
Michelin came and set the stage for giving South Caroli-
na a chance to be the country’s number one tire manufacturer.
In addition to Michelin, Continental and Bridgestone are here
now, but they wouldn’t be had the technical training system not
pursued its high-tech design in the 1980s. Looking back Dr. Jim
Morris felt the system “improved the quality of the pre-employ-
The 1980s
A D E S I G N F O R T E C H N O L O G I C A L C H A N G E
