For many years, Licom Systems has been the “Italian arm” of AlphaCam, a leader in cad/cam software for wood, plastic, aluminum and composite machining centers. In recent years, the company has shown its “liveliness”, so we went to meet Marco Silva, managing director of Licom Systems, to shoot a picture of the current situation.
“Let me say that the recent years have been intensive and positive”, Silva said. “A new season started in 2014, when Alphacam joined the Hexagon group, a Swedish corporation listed on the Stockholm stock exchange. It was a strategic acquisition, not just an investment, and results have been significant, as the new owners have invested money and efforts, developing an entirely new division dedicated to smart production.
The most significant aspect is that this Swedish giant incorporates fifteen companies in the software and innovation business, and Alphacam is one of them. Joining a team with over 800 people had major effects, and even more the possibility to interact with other specialists and integrate portions of our software with applications that have enabled us, for instance, to improve our 3D capabilities, to improve the nesting software and to develop a wide range of new commands.
The developments of recent years have gained us a new target of customers in the wood industry: until few years ago, we mainly addressed small and medium companies, now we are handling projects involving large-scale production, with major kitchen and contract furniture manufacturers. It’s not just “big volumes”, but also high quality, the capacity to integrate machinery and technology of different brands, interfacing with databases and all the old and new aggregates introduced by Industry 4.0. At Alphacam, in recent years, the staff have increased by 30 percent, and we have a similar trend in Italy: we hired new engineers and opened a new office in Aversa, near Caserta, in the Campania region. We grew by 15 percent, achieving three million euro revenues”.
“We keep investing to seize any opportunity, starting from the project to organize user meetings to be even more involving: in Italy we have exceeded the threshold of three thousand customers, with more than five thousand licenses”.
“Today, production follows different concepts, much less “labor intensive” and much smarter. Of course, we have not abandoned our traditional customers, handicraft businesses and subcontractors, where Alphacam is used for the production of any item, including violins and contrabasses, or for the roughing out of church statues, to make a few examples”.
Are there sectors that are more “sensitive” than others?
“Yes, some industrial segments have implemented these principles better than others. I can mention the manufacturers of sofa frameworks, a business where we have registered a remarkable growth of nesting solutions… I can tell you that 50 percent of subcontractors working for these companies now use Alphacam because of our nesting performance… Things are going pretty well also in shipbuilding…”.
And what about Licom System?
“We are not just “agents/distributors”, as the Alphacam package is actually one of the few solutions that can be customized to the needs of each customer. Through our engineers, we have always offered the opportunity to “adapt” Alphacam to the software already found in companies, to the technologies they have decided to adopt, minimizing the level of complexity. We are developers, integrators, experts of production processes that use Alphacam to control machinery, adding all that is required, whether it’s other software or just the customization I mentioned. This is the real challenge of this period. There has been a revolution, mechanical companies have turned into mechatronic enterprises, and quite a few need advice, while the big ones have set up new internal divisions, maybe collaborating with the world’s leading platforms. And there is a question behind all this, namely that data need to be known and transferred, that technologies can interact with each other, through the relations we are good at creating”.
How important was joining a big international software group to make this transition?
“It was very important: Hexagon, now holding 50 percent of Licom System stocks, gave us a boost of energy, enhancing our capacity to develop ideas and programs by leveraging the huge experience and expertise of the Swedish group in our domains. Don’t forget that Alphacam makes 20 percent of its global revenues in Italy, therefore we are one of the most important members of the group. As a result, in the past three years, we have been requested to manage installations abroad, in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, South America… Let’s say we have identified interesting solutions, very special concepts, some of them also for Ikea. We collaborate regularly with equipment and technology manufacturers, who often turn to us to integrate their solutions with their customer software or their habits and methods; this is what we mean by service, a warranty of quality relationship…”.
Next challenges?
“Keep supporting the development of smart production with software that is more and more performing but easy to use. We are improving in three-dimensional cad, thanks to a common platform for all the products of the group. We will integrate design and manufacturing even tighter with more and more powerful 3d software, and we will introduce ad-hoc applications for robots, which are spreading out in working environments. Looking ahead, we have already started to evaluate solutions where a robot effectively replaces a machining center; this development will have to be clarified, but it will certainly play a major role in the future of the wood and furniture industry… the future is here!”.
