How does a major industrial group evolve from 170 RPA robots in production to agentic automation? In this case study recorded at the Tech for Industry Show, Philippe Leonhart (Head of the Automation CoE, Corporate Business Services, Michelin) and Jean-Philippe Watzky (Enterprise Executive, UiPath) share seven years of lessons — since 2018 — serving order to cash, procurement, finance, logistics and "personnel" processes (at Michelin, humans are not resources).
The session covers: a Center of Excellence built around a mission ("helping our colleagues work more efficiently") rather than a technology — "just because you have a hammer doesn't make everything a nail"; the organization's evolution (outsourcing, centralization in India, then a federated model with a hub and time-zone-based delivery teams); four service offerings (Ignite, Advise, Build, Drive & Sustain the Value); value measurement embedded in design — every robot logs the hours given back to the business; and concrete cases, from tire homologation testing in R&D to mold management in plants. Then the shift to agentic: why GenAI unlocks the cognitive steps RPA couldn't cover (procurement, document understanding), why processes must be redesigned (HBR reference), and how to orchestrate humans, robots and agents — including those from SAP, Salesforce or ServiceNow — with governance and security. On the UiPath side: the vision of a European vendor (4,000 people) combining decision-making agents with execution robots.
An essential case study for GBS, transformation, finance and IT leaders.
