Supply chain excellence Incas Group

SUPPLY CHAIN EXCELLENCE

The winds of change are currently blowing fresh and strong at Incas Group, one of Italy’s most respected companies in the field of automation systems for the supply chain. Marketing director Ramona Pronesti talks to Filomena Nardi about the company’s latest achievements.

Whether it is improving the warehouse logistic activities of a famous food company, developing a new picking system for a big multinational or delivering the most up-to-date shipping software to a prestigious company in the manufacturing industry, offering tailor-made and bespoke solutions for the management of the entire supply chain is the cornerstone of Incas Group.

Established in 1981 by current CEO Ermanno Rondi, the company’s headquarters are located in Biella, one of the most important industrial centres in the Italian region of Piedmont. “Positioning Incas in Biella was definitely not a random choice,” says Mrs Ramona Pronesti. “This city has for many years been the heart of the Piedmont textile industry and Incas began its activity as a company specialising in automatic weighing and labelling systems mainly intended for the textile sector.”

In 2011 Incas Group will celebrate its 30th birthday and during all these years the company has been able to quickly move from a local entity to a leading supplier of highly dynamic automated logistics solutions for material handling and warehouse management systems. “When Italy’s textile industry started to be threatened by the growing competition of low-cost fabrics coming from the Far East, our CEO Ermanno Rondi had the intuition that the only way to stay on the market was to concentrate on quality and high technology.” It was at this point that Incas took the first step towards becoming an integrated solutions provider for both large and small companies. Mrs Pronesti continues, “Our expertise today is in the planning, design, implementation and lifetime service to help managing a company’s supply chain.”

Dates to remember

Incas Group’s success has been marked by a long list of major events which are worth mentioning. “An important date for us to remember is 1988,” says Ramona Pronesti. “This was when our R&D team developed the first warehouse management system based on radio frequency terminals, which today is better known as WMS EASYSTOR, our flagship product.”

EASYSTOR is an operative management system for the optimisation of warehouse logistic activities. It has a modular and open structured application, it is easy to configure (even by the user) and it naturally adapts itself to the most widespread operative realities. “Another important event took place in the years 92/93 during which we developed the first fully automated system for Bonfiglioli, a Bologna-based company.” According to Mrs Pronesti this represented the first of many successful implementations of plant automation systems.

In 2007 Incas merged with Nortech Impianti a company founded in 1985 and specialising in the electrification and automation of material handling systems. “Nortech was already a company under the Rondi family’s leadership, which worked closely with Incas,” said Mrs Pronesti. “However, in order to respond better to our customer’s specific requirements, all of Nortech’s business and technology has been now integrated into Incas, giving us the ability to meet future market challenges in a better way.” Mrs Pronesti also stated that the brand Nortech Impianti is still present as an Incas division specialising in security systems fully integrated with industrial automation systems.

Tailor-made solutions

In an increasingly competitive global market, factors such as innovation, quality and the ability to provide highly customised services

represent a great advantage over the competition. “We have always invested and we will continue investing in innovation,” points out Ramona Pronesti. “We work very closely with our customers and being a leading systems integrators company, our main objective is to develop the best possible solution that will help our clientele to be successful in their business.”

Through a well-established distribution network, Incas follows and supplies its customers wherever they are. “Obviously our main market is Italy, followed by South America and Spain where we have an office in Barcelona. However we are present in almost every country in the world,” adds Pronesti. “We always find the right solution for anyone, anywhere.”

Incas offers its products and solutions to a vast number of industrial sectors, from Logistic and Transport to Publishing, from Food to Cosmetics, from Electronics to Fashion, and so on. “Each individual production plant, depending on the product or commodity they produce, has different challenges and different needs. However, we are able to find the right technology for any manufacturing company that needs to lower production costs while optimising the efficiency of its workflow processes.” To prove the point Mrs Pronesti confirmed that Incas Group has recently developed the first warehouse management system for the Sant’Orsola Malpighi Hospital in Bologna. “This is a new market for us. It is a sector that offers our company new opportunities for the future and we are ready to rise to the challenge.”

A challenging future

As indicated by Ramona Pronesti, markets have changed dramatically in the past few years. “At one end, there’s China and its lowcost products. At the other, there’s a modification in the characteristics of consumers who are becoming more demanding than they were a few years ago. Furthermore the recent economic crisis has affected all industry sectors in different ways. Despite all of this our company has not stopped investing. We have developed new solutions, optimized our internal organization and found new ways to improve our already efficient customer service.”

Clearly Incas Group is ready to tackle any future challenge. Mrs Pronesti concludes, “Our big strength is being a systems integrator. We are like a tailor always ready to design the right suit to fit a specific customer. We are very flexible and we can quickly adapt and change, depending on market requirements.” By providing tailor-made solutions to each one of its customers Incas has already acquired leadership in various sectors and in different areas. Now the company has another big challenge ahead – to become the undisputed Italian main provider of both picking and storage automation systems by 2015. n