2010 Sustainability Report - Cummins.com

History
Firmly rooted as
we reach higher
Cummins’ pursuit of innovation and the Company’s
commitment to both principled leadership and a longterm
vision is rooted in the men who played a critical
role in the company’s creation in 1919.
Clessie Cummins was a Columbus, Ind. man
with a lifelong fascination for machines. W.G. Irwin,
whose family fortune backed the Company’s
launch 91 years ago, pursued profits with a sense
of community mission and a desire to help
local entrepreneurs.
Cummins was Irwin’s driver and a mechanic who
opened an auto repair shop in a vacant forge building
with his boss’ blessing in 1913. The business evolved
into a machine shop that performed a variety of Army
and Navy ordnance jobs during World War I.
Clessie Cummins was increasingly fascinated by
diesel technology, which had been introduced in
the late 19th century in Europe but had not gained
widespread commercial success. Fourteen weeks
after the end of the war, the Cummins Engine
Company was born, backed by Irwin.
Cummins corporate headquarters preserved part of the factory that
was an early home for Clessie Cummins’ diesel engine company.
Clessie Cummins
Thanks in large part to the incredible patience of Irwin
and his wife, who championed the business as a
way to provide jobs to the young men of Columbus,
Cummins survived a rocky start in which it didn’t turn
a profit until 19 years after the Company was founded.
A third pivotal figure in the Cummins history would
enter the picture around that time. J. Irwin Miller
was the grand-nephew of W.G. Irwin. Miller had
been involved in Cummins’ operations for more
than a decade before being elected president of
the Company in 1947. He would play a key role at
Cummins for the next three decades.
Educated at Yale and Oxford, Mr. Miller is largely
responsible for Cummins taking on the qualities it
is so closely associated with today: environmental
consciousness, integrity, diversity, global involvement
and community service. It was under Miller’s leadership
that Cummins first became a global company,
entering India, China and other locations outside
the United States.
Today, Cummins is a global power leader –
the world’s largest independent manufacturer
of diesel engines and related components. What
started as a business to manufacture diesel engines
for farm irrigation pumps is today a family of four
interrelated, yet diversified business segments.
Diesel engines provide about 49 percent of
our revenues; Power Generation, 19 percent;
Components, 18 percent and Distribution, 14 percent.
10 Cummins Inc. Sustainability Report 2010