Didelse designs and manufactures special gearboxes used in various sectors. Established in 2015, the company has immediately operated on the market as skilled partner for overhauls and upgrades, enhancing design with a R&D department trained to support customers in the solution of criticalities on new or less recent plants. Makers of this new entrepreneurial challenge were Maurizio Carminati, president of the company and co-founder with the managing director, Edoardo Battistuz.
To outline the state-of-the-art of the company and of its strategic vision, we have asked some questions to Mr Maurizio Carminati investigating, first of all, what are the origins on which this ambitious project is based.
«Didelse was born as concrete answer to the precise industrial project of becoming “the” Italian reference partner by lean operation, flexible execution and technical competence in the sector of special gearboxes. The idea is conceived in 2011 and it was supported by a common shared vision on how we should act to survive in such a competitive and overworked context like the world of custom gearboxes. A vision become stronger in time, hand in hand with the perception that those with an opposite organizational model as to ours started having dramatic economic accounts, or they even shut down their businesses».
On what guidelines have you grounded your growth course on the market?
«Our strategy was, and still is, based on a simple concept: to conform to the new rules of the modern market, we necessarily had to be “few but skilful”, i.e. to have the lowest possible fixed costs and to involve clever motivated collaborators. «We had also noticed– Mr Carminati adds – that globalization had induced companies to be more and more competitive. This input led some managers to make obliged and sometimes awkward choices, involving, as repercussion, the impoverishment of their companies’ most strategic competences when, in the desperate need of decreasing fixed costs, they reduced both the technical department, maybe with the R&D division, and the workshop’s staff, experienced in mechanical machining, assembling and testing. Hence our reflection of completing our mantra in “few, but skilful, competitive but especially competent”».
After the first five years of activity, how is Didelse organized today?
«According to what above said, we have maintained our in-house design division with five designers including three mechanical engineers, the case machining, the dimensional control, assembling and testing. In outsourcing, we manage instead the carpentry manufacturing of cases, turning and gear cutting machining, heat treatments and gear grinding, all activities we entrust to the best Italian companies, almost all of them headquartered in the outskirts of our enterprise.
From the manufacturing point of view, at Rescaldina headquarters (Milan) we rely on an articulated machine fleet, a three-dimensional measuring machine and a testing bench provided with data-recorder to register speeds, temperatures, vibrations, the oil pressure and flow during the white test, generally executed before the delivery.
How much is the support, assistance and customer care activity important?
« I dare defining our Service of absolute level because, especially in dark times like those we are living, I believe that to rely on a partner able to overhaul and to upgrade the most obsolete machines is an extraordinary added-value. Even more when manufacturing processes require better
performances».
In all these cases, to guarantee results of a certain level, we must work according to very severe and professional criteria: for instance, after the dismounting and the meticulous cleaning, we control all gears and shafts with non-destructive tests, we measure cases from both the dimensional and geometrical point of view, with utmost care of the axis alignment, we check whether gears and bearings are compliant with the new performances and we provide for finding the specific solutions so that the machine, after our overhaul, has the same functional warranties as a new machine».
What is your opinion about the opportunities offered by 4.0?
Concerning Industry 4.0, even before this term became so diffused, although coined in the distant 2011 in Germany, we had already developed a sort of “black box” that we called StressBox, drawing inspiration from the data-recorders equipping aircrafts, to be applied to gearboxes. This application pursues a double goal, i.e.: concerning the gearboxes installed and then already in operation, the StressBox collects and files in its inside, for a maximum duration of one year, all operation parameters, with the possibility of generating alarms through both SMS messages and by activating sirens or flashing lights. For the gearboxes intended for revamping, the StressBox helps instead us and our customers to assure the new demanded performances coincide with the process reality».
How do you imagine Didelse in the future?
«Concerning the future – Mr Carminati ends – the vision goes through the famous and nowadays overworked “continuous improvement”, which for us means not only improving technique and performances of our processes but also never giving up studying and then learning, also and especially from our mistakes. The new dreams are two. The first is to succeed in operating successfully in the aeronautic testing world. The second and challenging ambition is instead try
exporting this new business model of ours to other Countries, perhaps a bit less “ready” than us, digitally centralizing all the parts of our process permitting it. For what reason? Because, whatever you say, the smart work on the milling machine or to key a bearing has not been invented, yet».
About Didelse
Headquartered at Rescaldina, in the outskirts of Milan (Italy), Didelse designs and manufactures special gearboxes for various sectors, such as iron and steel industry, sugar, rubber, plastic, mining and food. The company operates on the market as reliable partner for overhauls and upgrades, completing design with a research and development department trained to help customers in the solution of criticalities on old and new plants. Quality, flexibility, competitiveness and competence are assured by the synergies with the appurtenance Group, (Carminati GROUP), with nine boring machines, a metrological room equipped with a three-dimensional measuring machine and 2,500 square metres of manufacturing surface that allow managing complete job orders at competitive prices. Distinguishing highlight is the fast and efficacious customer service. The entrusted staff can answer quickly 7 days a week and 24 h a day in case of sudden plant downtime and/or failures.
(by Gianandrea Mazzola)
