The long event during the recent weeks at Biesse offered the opportunity to meet Federico Broccoli, Group Chief Commercial & Markets Officer, who took us on an exciting journey through the “hottest” topics of this period.
“The sanitary emergency has been and is still a current topic, but it has also channeled family budgets to specific investments, including the quality of home living and the renovation of furniture. In March-April 2020 we found ourselves with at least 1,200 machines in an endless pipeline in our factories, so it was a huge relief to see demand grow, with customers and resellers waiting to receive the equipment to meet dynamic market demand”. Federico Broccoli went straight to the point, talking about the early days of the pandemic.
Federico Broccoli
“Since July 2020, more and more orders have come in, so many that we had to hire new people in manufacturing. We are producing at a sustained pace, working on two shifts on some assembling lines. We are doing our best to shorten the lead time, with an order book that reaches up to four-five months for standard machines, and even longer for big plants.
For a few weeks now, we have been making miracles to shorten the waiting time for customers, so as to help them face this positive season for the demand of finished goods”.
“We have never stopped – Broccoli continued – and we have become even better at maintaining our presence on the market even with no exhibition calendar: “Inside Spring” is an example, a clear demonstration of our improved capacity to show who we are in different ways.
We have become more “digital smart” at all levels, and we will try to do even better: we have planned more significant investments, as we are confident that this will be more and more important in the future, with a “Biesse platform” that will provide a place for customers to interact for services, maintenance, spares and purchases. “SOPHIA” was a giant step towards digitalization and it has allowed us to anticipate time: now we need to go further to make our digital channels even more business-oriented and customer-oriented.
I also have to say that customers are highly receptive to digital developments, and we are working to solve an increasing number of needs with a click, although “physical” events will remain among our priorities”.
Now, everyone is talking more and more about “services” and less about machines.
“The machine is becoming a prerequisite; the rest is the real added value. If we want to preserve the value of our technology, the only answer is services, all the “added values” that we can provide to our customers, from after-sales assistance to system upgrades, all aimed at increasing the productivity of customers and keeping it consistent.
This customer experience helps us fight back the companies that build their success on low prices. This is the challenge Biesse has accepted in recent years, having been able to offer not only top-quality technology, but also a richer and richer framework”.
This period has seen a relentless process of internationalization…
“Definitely. We have survived Covid because we have 1,100 people in our branches, a local workforce that has kept us alive, proving the effectiveness of our investments. A branch is like an embassy for us, it’s our front office where the best people must work, without forgetting that the product and the service evolution come from the headquarters…
In this balance, we have found our success, with branches that are tightly connected with each other and with the group. Biesse has always been focused on export, and in the past six to seven years, we have invested massively in our foreign subsidiaries to create a clear identify, to reassure customers that we are and we will always be in their countries. A powerful message…”.
Does working in different markets means you have to offer “different” machines?
“No: in the end, our customers want a machine with an adequate value, suitable performance, reliability and spare parts delivered in one day. There are several needs and we have decided to focus on the highest global standards: that’s our market, that’s where we start from to keep our organization “aligned”.
Let’s talk about innovation…
“At Biesse, we have been relying on automation for a long time, developing more effective and efficient machines not only for big customers and big plants, but also for small and medium businesses, down to the craftsman next door, if you allow this definition.
We offer a modular portfolio that starts from the solution listed under the “smartaction” concept, standalone technologies that are integrated and connected to create the best production workflow with a simple barcode associated to each element, each product, from design to packaging. This is a way to introduce also small and medium companies to “high-tech production”, an approach that will gradually lead to the real “automaction”, i.e. the connectivity of machines and processes, up to fully automated production lines.
You see, evolution is for few, revolution is for many. We must deploy a real revolution, bringing the foundations of Industry 4.0 down to family-run businesses, creating not only a different industry, but building a future of young digital operators who will give new strength to the sectors where we work. This is one of our priority commitments: working next to our customers to help them understand how to deal with the next steps towards the modern automated factory, which is not just a matter of big volumes, but a different way of “thinking”…”.
Mr. Broccoli, let’s close with your expectations for the future…
“We are experiencing a positive period, as the Italian market is supported by the fiscal incentives we all know. At present, as I said, we have a very satisfactory flow of incoming orders. We are also collaborating intensively with our suppliers so that they can also ride this growth trend, re-harmonizing the entire supply chain and facing an amazing price rally, a problem that the whole industry has to deal with. With the accuracy we put into managing raw material provisioning and our industrial capacity, we will be able to meet expectations in terms of lead time for machines and plants. This will probably result into end-of-year business results above expectations.
We are obviously happy with this situation, but we know we have to be cautious to get ready for the “new normal” that awaits us after these peculiar times”.
