Human feedback

Trial, error, corrective action, and then back to the beginning again… what is more being able to find enough space to think, plan and dream. This is the man in his doing and making, in terms of entrepreneurship. Today it is pretty difficult but at any rate possible, aboveall if you place people at the centre of things.

Vicenza, October 14. Neither angels nor demons, but people passionately and lucidly seeking a sustainable entrepreneurial dimension also suited to the current economic situation. This the sense of the encounter organized at the margin of the graphic arts, papermakers and converters assembly of Confindustria Vicenza and open to participation of companies and representatives of the region’s territorial associations.
Alberto Luca, President of the group, at the end of his mandate, wished to bring concerns from the world of publishing and commercial printing and printing on packaging (paper or flexible) to pool knowledge and experience in view of sustainable business, capable of transmitting value to all the actors along the supply chain.
Two the cases presented by the direct protagonists, that of Rumor Industrie Grafiche SpA and of Box Marche SpA.

Two for one
Less plus less makes more: in mathematics but also in reality, as Carlo Rumor and Paolo Morsoletto apparently found out. The story of two print companies – one printing periodicals, the other commercial products – that the economic and structural crisis of the information sector has placed in growing difficulty, also due to previous investments in machines and equipment. To get out of the fix the two entrepreneurs chose to found a company and create a larger and more efficient concern in productive and organizational terms.
Particularly striking the sincerity with which the difficulties faced in the phases of definition of the values of their respective activities were listed, subject over which the accountants called in to help wracked their brains for months, and in the end solved by the two entrepreneurs each taking on an equal share of the company quotas without too finer look at the details.

A matter of common sense, because being 100% owners of nothing doesn’t really make much sense.
Second painful note, the banks, who were not capable or willing to accompany this merger process. Indeed, transferring all the activities into one of the pre-existing companies at the end of 2013 tipped the scales in the ratio between income and indebtedness, the result leading to penalisation in terms of credit access.
In other terms it seems that “those who might have dutifully intervened” had not read or understood the dynamics of the operation. At any rate, the ultimate question in this merger is the human factor. This as far as the protagonists are concerned who, fundamentally basing things on reciprocal trust, built a path for the future. But the same also goes for theworkforce, called upon to take part in a new industrial project. Months on from the implementation the question of lay-offs was cast aside in favour of introducing a solidarity contract, to give individuals the time and opportunity to show their capabilities and professional skills beyond their work history or background.

Onus on efficiency
There are those that speak of “lean production”, those of the Toyota model: never mind what, in time the basic concepts of this manufacturing “philosophy” have also entered into the day-to-day running of Italian companies, seeking to find models capable of improving their response capacity to market demands through a modification of company organization and work.
Leaner, more reactive, more efficient… these are, in line with what we have said, the objectives achieved by Box Marche to respond to the market crisis that has also hit the converting sector and, more specifically, that of folding case production.

Company president Tonino Dominici speaks of this with enthusiasm, remembering how this process, that has changed the Corinaldo (AN) based concern, is born out of a sharing of ones own experience, knowhow and ideas with other companies of the segment, potential competitors, aboveall under the sector association (Gifasp, the segment grouping under Assografici, ed.).
In this way bonds of mutual esteem, friendship and cooperation – like those between Dominici and Luca - become consolidated, proof of the fact that companies have a soul, that of the people or person that heads them, but also those who work there.

And when things work in a company, they manage to express strong sentiments and meaning. But one has to be sincere and correct with oneself and the others as Dominici states and act as a team. And thus, in line with the fact that the Marches based entrepreneur has always said that the companies main resource… “went home every evening”, right from the first years of the crisis the company implemented an extensive scheme for training the workforce that has led to a different organizational and working model, involving all facets of company organization.

Teams interfacing with the market have been set up, in which commercial, sales and technical functions are combined both for job estimates as well as for the implementation of production procedures. In this way customer response times have been improved, waste and difformities reduced and lead time slashed.
A process of transformation that to be such - Dominici underlined - has to renew itself continuously and be pervasive, but that even before that has to be experienced and introjected with conviction, first and foremost by the entrepreneur him- or herself.
In other terms, as Federico Rampini writes in his book “Rete padrona”, describing a web that is master of us all: progress is such if we ourselves remain its masters.