3M Company Name

3M Company Name

In early 2002, the company finally adopted its nickname as its official nickname and officially became 3M Company. In 1905, the company moved to Duluth, Minnesota, to produce sandpaper with abrasive minerals purchased from another source through an investment by St. Paul businessman Lucius P. Ordway. The Cottage Grove plant manufactured PFAS from the 1940s to 2002. [70] In response to PFAS contamination of the Mississippi River and surrounding area, 3M stated that the area is “cleaned up by a combination of groundwater pump wells and soil sediment degradation.” The restoration plan was based on an analysis of the company`s ownership and surrounding land. [71] The on-site water treatment plant that treated the plant`s post-production water was unable to dispose of PFAS discharged into the nearby Mississippi River. [70] The remediation cost estimate, which included a granular activated carbon system to remove PFAS from groundwater, was $50 to $56 million[72] and was funded from an environmental reserve of $147 million decommissioned in 2006. [73] On September 8, 2008, 3M announced an agreement to acquire Meguiar`s, a family-owned family-owned car maintenance business for over a century. In 1948, McKnight reorganized the company, creating eight departments and making them largely autonomous. He reduced his leadership style to a credo called McKnight Principles, which was the backbone of 3M`s corporate culture.

His crucial passage reads: “Mistakes will be made, but if man is essentially right himself, I think that the mistakes he makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes that management makes when it is dictatorial and when it commits to telling men. just as they have to do their job. The success of the McKnight Principles is evident in the company`s growth during McKnight`s tenure: when he became general manager in 1914, 3M was a $264,000 company; When he was appointed president in 1929, annual sales were $5.5 million; By 1943, 3M had generated $47.2 million, and by the time McKnight resigned as president in 1966, he had expanded 3M to a $1.15 billion deal. While William McKnight, the man responsible for 3M`s corporate culture, wasn`t actually a company founder, he deserves credit for what has made 3M successful during his 59 years with the company and beyond. Noa Staryk, president of the McKnight Foundation, which McKnight founded in 1953, said, “There are two values that resonate with my great-grandfather: innovation and risk-taking.” The N95 respirator was developed by 3M and approved in 1972. [99] As it was able to filter out viral particles, its use was recommended during the COVID-19 pandemic, but supply quickly became scarce. [99] Much of the company`s supply had already been sold before the outbreak. [100] 3M`s Pollution Prevention Country (3P) program was launched in 1975. The program was initially focused on reducing pollution at the plant level and was expanded in 1989 to promote recycling and reduce waste in all divisions. In the early 1990s, approximately 2,500 3P projects reduced the company`s total global pollutant production by 50% and saved $3 million to $600 million by eliminating the generation of waste requiring post-treatment. [62] [63] On the occasion of its 100th anniversary, 3M changed its legal name to “3M Company” on April 8, 2002. Drew followed this invention by developing an even greater success for the company: the cellophane strip.

Drew has now been promoted from lab assistant to CTO (see box) and helped a client solve their problem sealing their insulation material in moisture-resistant packaging. While working on it, a colleague evaluated how he packed 3M`s masking tape in cellophane. Drew saw the cellophane and thought, “Why couldn`t this stuff be covered with glue and used as a sealing tape? It is moisture resistant. Although it did not solve the problem of the insulation manufacturer, the company introduced it commercially in 1930. McKnight accidentally landed at 3M. The company had rejected him for a working-class job in 1906, and when they wanted to hire him as an accountant a year later, he had already decided to take a job elsewhere. But when he learned that his mother was sick, he turned down the job offer and prepared to go home – only to learn that his mother had recovered. The only remaining option was 3M. This turned out to be the best mistake the company ever made. Carlton`s philosophy “You can`t stumble if you`re not on the move” sums up how 3M started making adhesives and became a diversified company.

“One morning in 1923, I walked in and heard the most exquisite blasphemy I`ve ever known,” recalls engineer Richard Drew, who had done Wetordry tests at a body shop in St. Paul. The painter struggled to hide a section of a two-tone car (popular at the time) while painting the other. Most of the tapes were unfit for the task at that time because they left residue or reacted with the paint. Drew assured the painter that his company could solve the problem, an interesting boast given that 3M exclusively produced abrasives at the time. Many companies like to talk about giving employees the freedom to make mistakes. But 3M has found a way to integrate random opportunities into company policy and drive its transformation from a struggling startup to a Fortune 500 pillar. When Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, co-authors of Built to Last (1994), asked Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard for a business model, he replied, “3M! You never know what they`re going to come up with next. The beauty of it is that they probably don`t know what they`re going to come up with next.

Investor Lucius P. Ordway of St. Paul paid in 1910 for the company`s move to St. Paul. In late 2010, the state of Minnesota sued 3M for $5 billion in punitive damages, claiming it had released PFCs — classified by the EPA as a toxic chemical — into local waterways. [76] An $850 million settlement was reached in February 2018,[77][69][78], although 3M appeared before lawmakers in 2019, along with the Chemours Company and DuPont, to deny responsibility, with Denise Rutherford, the company`s senior vice president of corporate affairs, arguing that chemicals at current levels pose no threat to human health and have no victims. [79] 3M began in 1902 when Dr. J. Danley Budd, Henry. S. Bryan, William A.

McGonagle, John Dwan and Hermon W. Cable founded the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. They founded the company with the aim of extracting corundum, a mineral ideal for the production of sandpaper and grinding wheels. It turned out that what they thought was corundum was actually another low-quality mineral called anorthosite. Internal emails showed that 3M officials boasted of charging $7.63 each for earplugs, which cost 85 cents to manufacture. The company`s official response showed that the cost to the government includes R&D costs.[98] In 2000, the company began marketing these films under the Vikuiti brand. 1907 – Leadership in the Making Future 3M President and Chairman of the Board of Directors William L. McKnight joined the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co.

as an Assistant Accountant and became best known for shaping the company`s culture of innovation and collaboration. In December 2011, 3M completed the acquisition of Winterthur Technology Group, a glued abrasive company. 3M generated total revenue of $35.4 billion in 2021 and ranked 102nd on the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. companies in terms of total revenue. [10] In 2021[update], the company had approximately 95,000 employees and operated in more than 70 countries. [4] As a result, they decided to open a small laboratory for quality control testing and research into new innovative products. The first product to come out of their laboratory was “Three-M-ite”, which was developed in 1914, an abrasive fabric that is well suited for cutting metals and is extremely flexible. Soon after, they also developed the world`s first waterproof sandpaper. These products quickly became very popular, helping to make 3M a profitable business in 1916, and a year later, sales reached more than $1 million for the first time.

McKnight`s students followed his principles, and the company continued to grow in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Global expansion and products such as Post-it Notes (published in 1980) and a drug to control an irregular heartbeat continued to boost the company. But the trouble started in the 1990s. “For decades, management books have called 3M a model,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 1995.