An all-Italian production, a particular focus on small manufacturing realities whose effort provides added- value to the company’s customer portfolio. In this way, Eldecom Dedicated component proceeds at full rate towards a future implemented with labour and commitment, going on investing in research and innovation.
It is a young company but with solid roots that come from the thirty-year experience of Elettrometal brand and, today, from a business approach that bets on the training of a strong united team, thus succeeding, precisely thanks to it, in successfully overcoming a crisis time that has overwhelmed other competitors. The production core is the component, around which the company creates and imagines new applications and is able to offer a fast and reliable service, to face the market requirements with more efficaciousness. The company, ready to exploit the recovery, is neatly growing as witnesses also the factory enlargement that preludes to a wider growth. HA p&c has talked about that with the sole manager, Luca Tamburrano.
Eldecom dedicated components produces signal lamps, wiring systems, temperature probes and various overmoulded components like micro-switches. Are there currently significant product innovations in your production or technological evolutions of historical products?
As you can deduce from the company’s name itself, we exclusively manufacture products dedicated to customers’ requirements. The missing standardization sometimes does not allow an entire series of automations. What we have done starting from last year, and we are still doing, is a revision of manufacturing processes, through their streamlining and, where possible, automation, involving especially the by now consolidated products. Obviously, also other products benefit from these improvements that, alone, would not justify the necessary investments. Just to exploit some technical automation possibilities, an engineering of our base products becomes necessary, and starting from them we “customize” the product. Generally, however, this part of activity consists only in the modification of some slight details that do not revolutionize the product to which our customers are already accustomed.
What is the technology you exploit and what are the costs of research and development inside your company?
Until now, it has been very difficult to establish some preventive budgets and, under certain respects, it was not necessary. Very often, we have dealt with unforeseen needs or opportunities we have fulfilled, such as demands for new products, models and projects. In several occasions, precisely these situations have compelled the development of new products or models, which, on the other hand, we have accomplished intensively in the last three years. This has induced us to invest on average 4-5% of the turnover in these activities. Concerning the technological aspects, most of our products are technically mature but they have taken great advantage of new technologies, especially from the productive point of view, able to exert an important impact on products. The obvious exception is represented by the current massive introduction of LEDs and the rapid prototyping through 3D printing that has reduced costs and increased the speed of product development processes, new technical solutions and all decisional activities connected with them.
Your company has overcome brilliantly, with the participation of employees, the crisis that has overwhelmed other entrepreneurial realities. What is its health state today?
The strong support of all people working in the company was admirable and still today is the fundamental pillar on which Eldecom rests. Having faced also difficult situations has led all of us to a strong assumption of responsibility and an involvement in the corporate life, under all respects. This was, and still is, a very precious element that has given its fruits and today allows us to be satisfied with the situation, even if always attentive and aware that the strong market recovery we have witnessed since the beginning of the year is issuing new challenges we cannot ignore.
What are the horizons at which are you looking?
To succeed in exploiting the recovery I mentioned is the primary target nowadays, even if I admit it will not be an easy course. Unlike what happens for our competitors, we have decided to produce totally in Italy. On one hand, this compels us to rationalize the production more and more, to maintain the cost competitiveness, on the other hand it is an advantage in terms of offered service, element that is highly appreciated by our customers. All of our efforts, in fact, pursue the target of a further reorganization of the production to deal with the market growth without turning, as many were compelled to do, to a worsening of the service, in particular the average delivery term or the increment, sometimes disproportioned, of the minimum purchase batches. A relevant part of customer companies is represented by small manufacturing realities and the achieved service is a value of extreme importance for them, not negligible factor for us.
Please, describe us the expansion you are living now and the novelties concerning the factory.
All what above said compels us to an increment and a rationalization of spaces. No big enlargements are at stake, since the purchase of an adjacent building allows us to increase the surface by just one fourth of the current one but it is anyway sufficient to enable and make this rationalization practical and feasible. We consider this as only the first step of a long-term programme of which it is still premature to talk.
