Former Cummins Chairman and CEO Joseph Irwin Miller, who died Monday at the age of 95, will be remembered as a business leader, social activist and philanthropist who built Cummins
from a family business into a Fortune 500 company.
Long-time employees like to talk about a corporate measure used during the late 1970s. It was described as the Irwin Miller Transparency Test. Miller's theory was that if an individual was willing to explain to the local minister what he or she was doing, then it passed the transparency test and could "stand the light of day." It was a good guide for getting through tough times.
His desire to practice what he preached can be found in an excerpt from a 1945 memo to the Company's Executive Committee when he wrote the following:
"We understand the fact that we must give a machine the best care and the best treatment if we are to receive from it the best work. We have sometimes shied away from the similar fact that we must give a person the best care and the best treatment if we are to receive from him the best work."
Miller was born in Columbus, Ind., on May 26, 1909, to Hugh Thomas Miller, a college professor and politician, and Nettie Irwin Sweeney.
As a young man, he spent many hours in the workshop of Clessie Cummins, the diesel engine promoter who founded Cummins Engine Company in 1919 and who had been the family chauffeur. The family invested heavily in the Cummins engine, with W. G. Miller, the uncle of Miller, serving as one of the principles and a member of the board of the newly created manufacturing entity.

With degrees from Yale (1931) and Oxford (1933) universities and following a brief apprenticeship with a family-owned grocery chain in San Francisco, Miller went to work for Cummins in 1934 as the company's second general manager.
In 1942 Mr. Miller was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Navy Air Corps, where he served aboard the carrier Langley. He saw action in the Marshall Islands, Truk and New Guinea, but was called home to assume the role of executive vice president of Cummins Engine. At the time, the company was engaged in wartime production building engines for cargo trucks.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Miller set forth the company’s primary strategy. He was named president in 1945 and chairman of the board in 1951. Under his direction, the company set a high priority on research that would come up with new diesel technology, even if it meant obsolescing the company's own products. Second, Cummins worked to reduce costs, while maintaining high product standards. Third, the company created a national network of independent distributors through which it could develop and maintain a close relationship with customers.
Using this blueprint, Cummins sales increased from $20 million in 1946 to more than $100 million in just a decade. In 1956 the company launched its first overseas plant in Scotland. In the 1950s and 1960s, two presidents ran the company within the broad guidelines established by Miller, and by 1967 Cummins had cornered 50% of the diesel engine market.
Funeral arrangements are pending.