The specialists of five-axis machining centers for solid wood have really changed skin in the past few years. Tangible evidence is the inauguration of the new headquarters at the end of 2017…
…as well as their increasing and “strong” participation in a growing number of exhibitions around the world (in September-October 2019 they attended a dozen events worldwide), and most of all the decision to organize a regular in-house event to create a high-level opportunity to meet and discuss with partners, operators and guests.
This approach was launched with the inauguration of the new Mariano Comense headquarters and continued in 2018 with an event where participants could see many highlights of the Greda catalog in operation and had the opportunity to interact with world-class specialists in programming software, a “tool” that magnifies the capabilities of numerical control machining centers.
This year, they took another step forward, involving Felice Ragazzo, a professor at La Sapienza university in Rome, familiar to many of our readers. Ragazzo gave interesting “lectures” to the audience, under the topic “Give life to new ideas with advanced machinery: benefits and issues in the wood industry”, illustrating the relation between design, technology, wood and finished product. Ragazzo has always been fond of wood and searching for solutions, ideas, meeting points between material and tools to transform it, in order to achieve a useful, strong but most of all “beautiful” result.
“When a company opens up its doors, they invite you to visit their home,” they said at Greda during our visit. And we really had that feeling during the three-day open house event where visitors could see the “Diva” machining centers in operation, a compact machine with nine-square-meter footprint offering high performance and execution speed; “Sprinter”, a solution that can perform all kinds of five-axis operations, ensuring top versatility; and “Poker” e “Mitika”, two flagship solutions designed for milling, roughing, contouring, turning and sanding operations. And of course “Argo Gantry”, an ideal unit to process large-size panels.
All these models are well-known, they have been appreciated for many years, as they represent the long tradition of Greda combined with their capacity to pursue constant and effective transformation, achieving ever new performance standards, a wide range of capabilities that allow operators to get better results with higher productivity levels.
“We have grown and we are constantly expanding not only our offer of more and more advanced and performing technologies”, said Marianna Daschini, co-owner of the company with her brother Piero. “The experience of recent years, the crisis we have been going through, have taught us that entrepreneurs must be able to go beyond habits and “business as usual”, showing a different image of their business to the market in order to find partners that are willing to do more than just purchase a machine. Ultimately, this approach has led to the organization of the “Greda Lab” days: a company that operates on a global scale, facing the competition of many big players, needs to find a way to make the difference, transforming from a vendor of made-in-Italy products, no matter how good they can be, into a business that offers culture. Culture of products, of design, of performance, of productive solutions and everything that revolves around it.
That’s why our open-house event is not only open to customers, it’s an opportunity to introduce ourselves and interact with institutions, schools, the ever-growing community of designers. Networking, starting new collaborations means not only combining forces, but creating stronger and stronger relationships, sharing a culture that builds on the willingness to communicate, on commitment, on a correct definition of priorities, on know-how, on the culture of beauty. We make machining centers, equipment. And we are good at imagining, designing and building them, but we must have, we must offer something more.”
It’s a challenging mission…
“Forward-looking companies cannot do without this kind of vision. During our “Greda Lab” days we meet “established partners”, but we have also worked hard to turn these events into an opportunity to develop a new social culture, as that is the only way an Italian family-owned company, traditionally accustomed to smaller scales, can make a difference also in the global markets. Let me be clearer: today, we have hosted the parson and the mayor of our town, our customers and many partners, but we have also invited professor Felice Ragazzo, a person who needs no introduction, with whom we have started an interesting collaboration, to leverage our machines for very innovative applications. We have opened up the doors, we want to take one step each day, to move further…”.
This proves that Greda has changed skin…
“We have changed our mental attitude, because you cannot develop a business and create networks of companies without an underlying vision, your own cultural philosophy, shared with our collaborators, with everyone working with us, those who travel around the world to install and test our technology, that develop deeper and deeper relationships with customers all over the world, establishing human relations first of all. Being social is not enough: you must be human first, meet, discuss, understand together. That’s why we have opened up the doors! In two days, we hosted almost 500 people and that’s the best way to celebrate 2019, which closed with 30 percent growth over the previous year. And there will be still a lot to do in the coming years…”.
by Luca Rossetti
