A family business was set up in Bologna 60 years ago and has now reached its third generation providing automotive and industrial robotics solutions The objective is to improve the efficiency and quality of industrial processes. Today, Stima looks to high-tech collaborative robotics, which has made the market more scalable. For FARE INSIEME, Giampaolo Colletti interviewed Federico Mazzanti, the President and Sales Manager at Stima
by Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
In order to talk about robotics and industrial automation, you need to first of all talk about people, about that human touch that makes the difference. It may seem a paradox, but the story we are about to tell you focuses indeed on technology, yet leaves room for people; their ingenious intuitions, their creativity, their ability to adapt and their desire to work as a team. This is Stima, a company based in Emilia that looks ahead to the future but was born in that difficult past that was the Postwar period, when everything was possible yet very difficult to put together - literally. Today, Stima distributes automation and industrial robotics solutions with the objective of improving the efficiency and quality of industrial processes
Company profile. We find ourselves in Funo di Argelato, a hamlet with fewer than 6,000 inhabitants in the Bologna metropolitan area. Stima and CAI (Centro Automazioni Industriali di Ozzano, a company forming part of the group) employ around 50 people, with 95% of the products destined to the Italian market with a turnover of €18 million. An Italian story or, rather, an Emilian story, representing something truly special. One day, grandma Elves Valbonesi and grandpa Aureliano Cariani decided to set up their own business. Grandma used to work at Valzuffi Cuscinetti, a large business owned by her cousins, while grandpa used to work at the Alfa Romeo car dealership. They started by distributing pressure gauges made by Allemano, a historic Italian brand, because grandpa, during the war, used to work in the engine room of a submarine in front of a control panel filled with these objects. He died a few years later, and grandma called her daughter followed by the other siblings Mario, Gildo and Mila to work alongside her in what over the years became the family business. Grandma’s best sale? When she used to work for her cousins and was sent to take apart the abandoned war vehicles. They say that a ball bearing from the turret of a German panzer became part of the cable car to San Luca. Augusto Mazzanti and Alessandra Cariani were then taken on to strengthen and consolidate the company, while today brothers Alessandro and Federico Mazzanti are the third generation in charge of 80% of the family business, while 20% belongs to the historic partner Camozzi Automation Spa. But let’s go back to Argelato, the headquarters covering 4,000 sq m of logistics area plus 500 of production area. In a time of dematerialisation, these spaces - and therefore the physical product - count a lot. Grandma used to repeat it as a mantra: “Par vandar la roba ai vol la roba” (You need stuff in order to sell stuff). Federico Mazzanti, the 48-year-old President and sales manager also believes in this. A life dedicated to the company, as Federico used to play in the warehouse when he was a boy, and started to work there at 13. His allowance soon became a salary that enabled him to buy a moped because - as he still recalls - in my family, we have always worked hard in to buy anything. “Today, competence means knowing the ranges of our partner suppliers and rival producers in detail. Over the past few years, electronics has started to seriously characterise the new product lines - from analogue to digital products. It took a while, maybe around 10 years. But now the escalation supported by AI is upon us. We can provide technical assistance and support for the design of boards, pneumatic control panels and electro-pneumatic assemblies upon specific request of the client, and we can also manufacture them in our workshop,” says Mazzanti. This service is available to everyone. “We can merely assemble a project designed by the client, support the technical office of that same client when laying out or improving a system, and supply assembled and tested products,” stresses Mazzanti.
Present and future. Now Stima lives on automation, especially pneumatic automation. But it firmly believes in collaborative robotics, which increasingly leads to new technologies. “We have been working on automation since 1965 and collaborative robotics is the development of what we have always done and what has made the market more scalable, it has oiled the wheels, so to speak. Progress has been incredible: thermoplastic pipes used to be made of copper, and now we operate with robot dogs. We have also been chosen by Universal Robots, a global leader and inventor of collaborative robotics, as their distributors in Emilia Romagna.” The company has recently celebrated its 60th anniversary, but it has never been so young. The average age is well below 40. The main objective is to try and preserve the knowledge, which represents the added value to stay in the race. “We expect the perseverance that has always been our characteristic - alongside the fact that we place ourselves in the front line of the market as rebels rather than followers, will continue to give us a good time and allows new recruits to become passionate about our job. Just like the way our grandparents managed to make us and the generation that preceded us passionate,”concludes Mazzanti. Learning from the previous generations to better inhabit the future - this is the winning recipe for successful organisations.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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