A company that, like many others fortunately, understood that the real challenge was to always produce quality, but with new tools: hence the decision to invest in a Working Process machining center.
There is still the “old” carpentry, “… machines from the past that we use to prepare some semi-finished products, a refurbishment of something, but we stop there,” as they tell us, but the heart of the system is elsewhere, a large “enclosure” (safety first) inside which a large machining center works: the blocks are loaded at the beginning of the line and there they are, transformed into elements ready to be assembled.
This is the increasingly widespread reality of those who produce window frames: using modern, integrated, effective and efficient lines to continue to offer the quality of the grandparents and artisan fathers.
Stefano Bortoletto, born in 1986, third generation of carpenters, is our Virgil in this company that has very strong roots in wood: you can understand it at every step, looking in every corner that here the entire evolution of making doors and windows has been experienced.
“My grandfather Dino started building windows in 1957,” Stefano tells us. “To be honest he did a little bit of everything and only a few years later he decided to specialize in window frames, a choice that during the economic boom of our country allowed us to grow significantly in a short time.
A passion that we have in our blood, that my grandfather passed on to his two sons, my uncle Loris and my father Fiorenzo Bortoletto, and that reached us grandchildren: to me, who, like my dad, follow the production side, and to my cousins Giovanni and Angela, more involved in commercial, management and marketing activities.”
Today Bortoletto Serramenti is a company with 7,000 square meters in the southern industrial area of Padua, with a turnover of about 5 million and employing around thirty people, where high-quality window frames are produced to meet any customer requirement or need. Customers can choose their preferred frame among the different collections presented in a beautiful showroom or request customizations and tailor-made details, “… because today the flexibility of the machines and latest-generation systems we use allows us to do everything, to create exactly the door or window that our customer wants, with a very high degree of freedom.
This is not only a strength, but our vocation: we have never pursued large numbers, we have never wanted to produce at any cost, in fact today we essentially produce the same volumes as always, an average of about twenty frames per day.
We do it, however, in a more modern way, being able to count on hours of unattended work, during the lunch break or at the end of the day, knowing that we can also push a little on the accelerator to better manage demand peaks while always maintaining that quality which is our family’s “creed.” All in an overall vision of what we are, because production is only one aspect, albeit fundamental, of a company’s life, knowing that the elements will then have to be painted, assembled, that the hardware will have to be installed… everything must be coordinated.”
Mr. Bortoletto, who are your clients?
“We work both with retailers and with private customers throughout Veneto, a region where the “home asset” is still a great value. We offer any type of frame for a medium-high range clientele, in wood and wood-aluminum, in addition to some other products that we consider “accessory,” because our true vocation remains wood processing.
A production centered on a Working Process line where we produce everything, from large lift-and-slide doors to the smallest piece of wood. A gamble that my parents took, abandoning more traditional technologies that were the best solution as long as the numbers were “important” and the frames all the same, but with the push towards ever smaller batches and often extreme customization it became necessary to move in a new direction.
From 2008 onwards flexibility became essential and the fact that we picked up the first signals allowed us to move in time, avoiding the earthquake that hit the sector in the following years. With Working Process we embraced an intelligent and flexible way of producing, which put us in the position to respond to old and new customers without limits, while maintaining good productivity.”
Have we reached the “automatic window frame factory”?
“Let’s say we are getting very close,” replies Stefano Bortoletto: “… being able to have automatic storage in the input, which can hold up to 400 pieces, and equally intelligent unloading systems gives us a certain freedom in production, knowing that everything in between is managed by a line that can work autonomously.
This does not mean, however, that today one can disregard the knowledge of wood: knowing it, respecting its grain or the characteristics of the species we work with (at Bortoletto Serramenti they mainly work with spruce, but also oak, ash, pine, larch; editor’s note) means making the difference.
Without forgetting how much the frame has changed in recent decades: from a 58-millimeter frame with one gasket, two at most, to an asset that is a product of high engineering, guaranteeing unimaginable performance, where the role of glass has opened many new possibilities. Frames with increasingly complex profiles, made possible by more intense collaboration with toolmakers, with at least three gaskets….”.
Speaking of toolmakers…
“… without their expertise everything would be much more difficult: we have been collaborating for years with TWT in Rovereto and with their help we manage our warehouse which includes at least eighty cutters with their blades… it is almost easier to use the Working Process machining center!” he adds, laughing.
“Jokes aside, looking at this line makes your wrists tremble. The first impact is scary, because we are talking about a concentration of ideas, technologies and inventions that in fact does exactly everything a good craftsman would do and that is saying a lot; but it takes little to get familiar, to realize that the operator interface helps a lot in all the steps, from data loading to management, up to programming. Ultimately I can tell you that it is even easy to use, but I have been working with it for fifteen years now and I have a certain confidence….”
So, satisfied with the choice…
“… so satisfied that in addition to the line installed in 2009, a second one arrived in June 2023: more than that… they worked side by side for a certain period, until the more recent “Logos Life Evo Executive 3555” went into full operation; at that point we essentially decommissioned the previous “Logos.” Now we are even faster, more flexible and more precise… if I had to sum up in three words what the encounter with Working Process meant for us, I would say flexibility, productivity and quality of finishes. The elements come out of the line perfectly “finished,” whatever processing we have done, ready for the mechanical assembly of the sashes, while the frames are glued. Everything then goes to our painting department.”
“You see,” continues Stefano Bortoletto, “working with these technologies means having great support to offer a product that works, structurally and aesthetically perfect, recognized as a standard of quality by all our customers.
Of course, it is also necessary to know how to promote and sell them, to convey the values of a Bortoletto window, but starting from a frame whose value is immediately perceived is fundamental. As we mentioned earlier, the frame has changed a lot and we are no longer talking about four pieces of wood with a glass and a lock: today there are standards, tests, certifications, installation quality and a thousand other small details that make it a concentration of technique that is put to the test every day, maybe even dozens of times.”
Nice to be a carpenter today, right?
“Undoubtedly being a carpenter has a different dignity compared to the past. Dealing with the rigor with which a window or a lift-and-slide door must be designed and built, using certain machines, being able to have technologies like those offered by Working Process has taken us to another planet.
Not to mention safety! Today we are perhaps more engineers than carpenters, but this has not taken away our passion for wood, the point from which everything starts….”
