CASE HISTORY FAMOUS Ltd
A development path enterprise: from subcontracting to the final market
FERDINAND AZZARO
The history and development company
Company Ltd Zoppola Fame (a town near Pordenone) starts now to make its first ten years of life. It was born in 1990, intuition and conviction of Mr. Gustavo Bomben processes that are considered "poor" and have no meaning for large companies in the Pordenone (such as Electrolux, Zanussi or Ilpea) could become reality in the medium term and interesting market niches to exploit.
Mr. Bomben was then a brilliant young designer Zanussi-Electrolux with a strong will and a strong entrepreneurial character tended to create something of their own. Created Fama srl \u200b\u200bIlpea when he realized that he wanted to get rid of a micro-production phase (the smear of rubber) that had low margins and a lot of repetitive manual and automated processing only through a policy of high investment. He rented a factory near Ilpea and with little financial investment in equipment and hired the first employees. Soon Ilpea - always in a logic of outsourcing - outsourcing another micro-production phase: the joint of rubber profiles. The company consolidated
soon three basic beliefs: the first was to work on contract, initially for one company (Ilpea) operating in the network-Electrolux Zanussi. This ensures a customer in the sales and finance from the banks. The second was working on "niche products", particularly in the initial trimming of the rubber hand (considered unattractive by the large producers and profitable as non-standard) and then, working with more expertise. The third, sustaining growth with low initial investment, in order to minimize business risk.
These three lines of development have always been the engine of growth, thanks to the choice of two trusted employees working on different functions allow the continued defense of production and cost control.
growth by "small steps" typical of each of the subcontracting company produces significant results, in fact, the company develops in the decade up to: buy a factory of 1200 square meters.; Increase (almost doubling) the turnover of 1995 increased from 2 billion lire to the current 3.8 billion, largely depreciate the equipment acquired, and investments in machinery and innovative high-tech, in order to increase the speed of the production process, increase the number of players (mostly operating and dedicated to the machines), to the current 38 employees.
This growth is the result of a careful diversification strategy implemented by the company that led to the rise of the product portfolio, which increased the portfolio-clients. With regard to the size
product portfolio that we can highlight that the company currently operates almost exclusively as a contractor in the joint account of rubber, is planning for the coming months a real strategic change. Fame has two areas of business activity: the first (that we could define the current core business) is the profile of rubber, in which it operates as a contractor account, the second (which we define as the business of the future) is the assembly of doors appliance industry, a process that is already giving some satisfactory results in terms of turnover, but that in the near future will require the expansion of the company. The realization of this fact will lead to product Fama purchase all the components for the construction of ports in the appliance and will introduce at the same time, significant innovations in the components, both in form and material used.
As for the wallet-size customers, we emphasize the evolution took place in 90 years: from the original single-customer (Ilpea) we moved quickly to a variety of clients, including Iseo (Lake Iseo), Complastex (Lucca), Atel (Milan) Meteor (German company). These customers are geographically dispersed in many different areas and weigh their percentage of the annual turnover of fame for almost equal shares, which makes possible the undertaking of Zoppola, to interweave and develop new relationships with partners and quantitative (s) identified on domestic and foreign markets. In particular, it is important to emphasize the strategic turning point that will be implemented in the coming months: the definition of new and important business relationships with customers worldwide total (eg AEG regarding the assembly and sale of doors for household appliances) will cause a strong growth market and will lead the company to operate in the export market, with its own brand and defined. This project is being fast definition and application.
The organization and human resources
Fame Ltd is structured in the form of elements (see Figure 1) and is divided into:
· Area production: make production plans within the time specified by customers;
·
· Area Technical: innovative products or work customer needs;
· Area Administrative: generate - through an ad hoc software program - monthly reports of costs and revenues;
· Area commercial developments will create new staff soon and important business relationships.
Mr. Bomben is the sole director and acts as overall co-ordination, formulation and implementation of operational strategies.
The company processes are very focused on specific customer needs: from delivery to product quality, everything is based on maximizing customer satisfaction. In fact, the
manufacturing process is simplified because it does not appear purchases and management of raw materials but only work in progress and handling of products supplied by the customer with pre-defined and agreed timelines. The logic of the entire production process is geared to maximizing efficiency, or optimization of the timing of machines and personnel entry.
The company is well organized thanks to the detailed formalization of orders and other procedures with a clear focus on efficiency and quality of the entire production process.
The company has dedicated the past ten years in all, a great attention to innovation information that led two years ago to set up an integrated information system that streamlines information and creates a relational database and reporting very advanced.
But these results would not have been possible without the help of a special ability, the ability to manage customer relationships.
The development of customer relationships during the 90s, was driven by three main factors. On the one hand, the ability to create what the customer wants, including new parts or new parts, for a low cost. On the other hand, anticipating what the customer wants, through a continuous business improvement, often linked to innovation processes. Finally, rapidly changing what the customer wants. So innovative creation, anticipation, and changes seem to be the three paradigmatic pillars of this small, but interesting, Pordenone company.
Particular attention needs to also manage the production process through all phases of work. The three main products (profile rubber gaskets dryer, tumbling) are the stages of cutting or press and then splice or trimming: for all the products there is a final quality control. A concise but comprehensive, the main processing shown in Table 1. Table 1 emphasizes the process of process innovation occurred in the past decade, during which Fame has invested heavily, not only in technology but also in applied research, to transform manual processes into automated processes.
This process of technological innovation turns out to be far from over for the foreseeable future, is planning to introduce a totally new plant in tumbling: control by artificial vision. The artificial vision system is equipped with special optical instruments by which the traditional quality control phase, centered on the observation and direct continuous operator, will replaced with a working automatic analysis of the finished product.
Fame is going to make it another step forward that will enable it to become a small company with high innovation process.
Table 1: Products and processing stages in FAMA Ltd
Product Processing Work phases present future work
profile rubber gasket
automaticaautomatica tagliogiuntura ic or selectable hand dryer felt ic or selectable tagliogiunturaincollaggio hand hand hand automaticaautomaticaa
tumbling stampasbavaturacontrollo automaticaautomaticamanuale automaticaautomaticavisione in artificial
Source : ns. processing of corporate data
Concluding
Over the past decade the company has grown thanks to the ability to understand, and in many cases anticipate customers' needs.
The strategic lines of development (transition from account terzismo market outlets under its own brand) provide new human resources, with common features of entrepreneurship, bringing together products and charged to create an orderly growth.
We believe that the challenges of the future will be linked Fama srl:
· the production: with programs defined by end users who use new operational methods different from those taken by existing customers;
· the logistics with purchase programs defined but with the ability to manage time and suppliers' prices, capacity up to now rarely used;
· to market with new operational methods and contact with customers;
· in finance: with a flow of income and expenditure more than the current that can generate "tension" to the previous economic and financial balance.
balance in addressing these challenges will be the beginning of fame for growth of revenues, markets and production volumes. This will allow the company to free themselves from the account work creatively to develop innovative products in a market much larger than the final and certainly challenging.
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