A
company engaged in metalworking was born in the Emilian motor valley: from classic carbon steels to stainless steel. And
then the aluminium alloys, the titanium alloys, and the high-strength alloys.
But keep in mind: technologies matter, but it is people who make the
difference. Giampaolo
Colletti interviews Ivan Andreoli, CEO of Andreoli for FARE INSIEME
by Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
There are years
that are worth more than others. Years that make history. Because not every
year is simply a succession of hours and days. In some, those hours and days
are worth much, much more. Years in which individual memories come together in
unison with collective ones. One of them is 1982. What a year! Many - who
knows, almost everyone - remember that year for its sporting exploits on that
Spanish football pitch that made us win the World Cup. And then that
unparalleled celebration from President Pertini. Yet in that same year, while
the world title was being played out, in the motor valley made up of passion,
sweat, skills and excellence, another jewel was about to be born that would
have allowed us to write new pages of the future of motor racing. So, the story we are about to tell starts in
1982 when two brothers - Dino and Luciano Andreoli, with a past as employed
metalworkers and a future as entrepreneurs - founded Fratelli Andreoli in
Maranello. Goal: to build innovative vehicles. The intuition was born from the
need of customers who were looking for a vehicle that did not yet exist on the
market: the camper. Dino and Luciano thus began modifying commercial vans,
transforming them according to the client's needs. And they didn't go
unnoticed. Also because their neighbours were very famous and the
professionalism demonstrated from the beginning attracted the attention of the
two local Formula 1 teams. So Dino and Luciano started making campers, but the
warehouse in which they worked was opposite the Ferrari headquarters. And so
the two stories intertwined, making it possible to begin work that no one in
Italy was doing at that time. One thing led to another: this is how the first
collaborations began, transforming the two brothers into true specialists in
dealing with aluminium and titanium alloys. From 1982 to the present day. This
vision has remained unchanged. Here then is the strength in the hands and the
power in the metal with aluminium welding, one of the first workshops in Italy
to do it in-house. A small workshop at the time, but as big as the entire
world.
People and technology. Andreoli
& C today has three sites in Maranello, 56 employees working 90% on the
Italian market and 10% on the foreign market. Customers are strictly linked to
the automotive and motor racing area, carpentry, aerospace and safety
activities. Everything revolves around metalwork, that is, metalworking. «In fact,
we refer to a vast range of production processes. This activity is fundamental
in many industrial sectors. In our specific case, metalworking is not just the transformation of
raw material into an artefact: when we work a sheet metal or a tube, we think
about what the product we make will be used for, giving a soul to what we are
going to transform. This leads us to have a high level of attention to our work
because it will not be a bracket or a tube, but, for example, be part of a
component of the largest radio telescope in the world or it will arrive on the
international space station or it will participate in the largest motor racing
competitions or it will be a small but equally crucial part of a large
automatic warehouse», says Ivan Andreoli, current CEO who started working
in the company in 2000, taking the helm in 2003. The technology itself is not
an exciting peculiarity. «What matters is an open mind and the desire to always
improve, without being afraid of the future. Thus, recklessness, combined with
creativity and competence, becomes that winning mix that makes things happen»,
specifies Andreoli. And a lot of things happened: over time the company expanded the
types of processes, introduced new production technologies and trained people in
a highly specialised way. «These skills went hand in hand with new technologies,
allowing us to have extremely qualified personnel both in the use of process
management software, in production machinery, and in the knowledge of what was
done»,
says Andreoli.
Research and community. That passion
for motor racing flows through the company's veins, but ultimately what matters
is the continuous improvement, the detail that makes the difference. «We work
on everything that can be welded: from classic carbon steels to stainless
steel, but our specialisation is on aluminium alloys, titanium alloys,
high-strength alloys and lesser-known steels, which all new cars are made of.
It is our research and that of our partners, customers and suppliers that led
us to work with increasingly high-performance materials that did not exist
forty years back», says Andreoli. Meanwhile, 10% of the turnover is reinvested in
R&D activities. All this means refinement of processes, improvements in
equipment and above all staff training. Once again, people and the business
idea promoted at the time by Adriano Olivetti are central: “the factory cannot
only look at the profit index. It must distribute wealth, culture,
services, democracy. I think of the factory for man, not man for the
factory”.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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