From Valsamoggia, within the Bologna
metropolitan area, to the international markets. How a company created by a
successful intuition is now present in workshops all over the world. The
identikit of Euroricambi, 400 employees and a turnover of €140 million, 97% of
which obtained abroad. For FARE INSIEME, Giampaolo Colletti interviews
Pierluigi Taddei, president of Euroricambi Spa
di Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
Emilian by birth and a globetrotter by vocation, the company is a
global player in the production of gearbox and differential gears for trucks,
buses and earthmoving machines. Euroricambi is the story of an Emilian genius:
what started as a small provincial workshop has managed to reach markets all
over the world and now exports as much as 97% of its products. Everything
started forty years ago with Orazio Taddei, founder of Euroricambi and young
workshop manager at the time. Taddei invested his savings to acquire alongside
other partners a minority share of a company in San Lazzaro di Savena that had
closed due to bankruptcy. It was a mechanical workshop with machines for the
production of gears. A detail that made the difference. A few years later, the
idea to enter a potential market linked to non-original spare parts. And so
Euroricambi was founded. The objective was to manufacture spare parts that were
perfectly interchangeable with the originals, matching the quality standards
and technologies used, but with a lower sales price and entirely made in Italy.
“We still take original truck parts, redesign and reproduce them. We have
specialized in gearbox and differential components. In this way, we help
clients and the market as we provide the possibility of choosing between
original parts at high prices or spare parts such as ours, with the same quality
but at lower prices,” explains Pierluigi Taddei, president of Euroricambi.
From Valsamoggia to
the world. The company now boasts 400 employees
with a turnover of €140 million. We find ourselves in Valsamoggia, a town of
three thousand inhabitants in the west part of the Bologna metropolitan area
and on the road leading to Modena dotted with dozens of successful companies.
In this case, the business deals with spare
parts and is known all over the world and highly technological. This is what
Taddei himself explains. The company currently produces the widest range of
spare parts for the after-market - the parts are perfectly interchangeable with
the originals made by leading manufacturers. There is a lot of work involved:
processes, materials, technologies. Technological innovation is at the basis of
their success: Euroricambi workshops represent the state-of-the-art technology
for the processing of gears, which are manufactured using the most advanced
production systems. The human capital controls the technological gems that help
achieve market success: over 150 numerical control machine tools and 50 robots
are active 24-7 and perform sophisticated mechanical operations every day. Once
again, details make the difference: tolerances of a few thousands of a
millimetre are verified and guaranteed by integrated measurement systems. The
company has always invested in new technologies. “For this reason too, our
parts are chosen by mechanics all over the world for their repairs and now
cover most models from the main vehicle and transmission brands,” stressed
Taddei.
High-value warehouse. To
supply an excellent service to its clientèle, Euroricambi guarantees the
immediate availability of its parts: 97% of items are always available in the
warehouse and the quick logistic system enables to process orders promptly and
safely, also thanks to a careful packaging that protects each product. This
might seem a titanic enterprise as, each year, around 500 new items become part
of the range. “Our warehouse, which covers 15,000 sq m and includes 10,000
product codes, is a true challenge. We need to understand the market and
identify the right logics to have a stock of products that sell,” explained Taddei.
Numerous distinct processes linked to manufacturing are managed by the company:
we take care of turning, gear hobbing and cutting, scudding, milling, grinding,
radial grinding, running-in, metallisation with molybdenum, carbon fibre
coating, electronic beam welding, shot peening, heat treatment, fitting and
packaging. These concepts may seem incomprehensible to non experts, but they
reveal that different balance between professional skill and the use of
high-performance machines. And it is precisely within a winning alliance that
people and machines meet. 1,830 quality checks are carried out each month.
“This number reflects the high number of orders processed, which are currently
as many as 8,607,” reported Taddei. An incredible number. The future may appear
bleak considering the huge increase in the cost of energy and the international
context linked to the war. But, once again, investments in research are
essential as well as the redesigning of new products for this gem. “When it
comes to synchronisation components, over the years we have passed from
molybdenum to carbon fibre, which performs well. We need to industrialise so,
for us, reverse engineering is relevant, i.e. the procedure to identify the
property of a physical object through a complete analysis: dimensional,
physical, chemical and functional. Experience means technical knowledge. Which
is what characterises our people”.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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