A cause for celebration Officine Vica

A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION

In 2016 Officine Vica, a leading Italy-based metal cutting expert, marked its 80th anniversary as a company. Barbara Rossi talks to Fabrizio Meggiolaro – Business and Project Development Director, to find out the secret to the company’s long-term success.

“Throughout this year, we are holding a series of special events to celebrate our eightieth birthday as a company,” begins Mr Meggiolaro.

Indeed, the celebrations and special events started towards the end of 2016, and will continue to be held throughout the coming year. “We are very keen on celebrating this stage of our company’s life, because the special events we have been carrying out since the end of last year have given us the opportunity to highlight our continuity and the specific traits which define us as a company – in particular, the fact that we always work with the aim of taking care of our customers, fulfilling their automotive needs. Our motivation is being a highly reliable partner for our customers, a partner which makes them feel secure, even in the often-complex evolutions of our market – in other words the automotive sector. This philosophy is certainly strongly valued by our clients. We will further pursue it, as it is one of the pillars of our company. Our birthday gives us the opportunity to combine our forward-looking vision in terms of products, processes and research with our continuity in terms of values.”

Officine Vica offers a comprehensive automotive range, comprising customised products and processes. Its production is subdi-

vided into three major areas, namely automotive (passenger cars), truck, and heavy-duty vehicles (earth-moving and agricultural). “The market cycles for these segments are different and not necessarily aligned, however this is a real asset for us so we aim to maintain a balance among these three areas, which are also integrated. For instance, components for passenger cars are prevalent in terms of sales at the moment. We are reaping the benefits of the research that we conducted in this area in the last few years. Concerning research for the truck segment, I can say that we are in a testing phase and new products will soon be made available on the market. Our current R&D focus is on the earth moving and agricultural area. This means that in the next few years we are going to launch new products for this sector.”

As mentioned, all Officine Vica SpA’s products are customised. The four main product categories are engine (particularly fuel injection components), transmission (housings, shafts and axles), drive-

line (this is considered to be part of the transmission product family for larger vehicles) and body. “We are currently paying a lot of attention to the body range, as this area will offer interesting opportunities for development in years to come.”

The Rivoli (Turin) headquartered company holds all the major certifications required by the sector, including ISO TS16949:2009, ISO 9001:2008, OHSAS 18001:2007 and ISO 14001:2004. “Holding these certifications is a necessary condition for working in our field but it is not the only one. We must also have all the specific certifications required by the different automotive OEMs.”

A cutting-edge machine fleet

Over the past few years Officine Vica has invested in renovating its production machine fleet. The number of five-axis machines was

increased, as well as the dimensions of the supplied components, which can now reach a 1600/1700mm turning diameter. In terms of mechanical processing Officine Vica can go over 2.10m with high production machines. This is a real distinguishing feature.

The company serves all the major automotive OEMs, as well as large Tier 2 suppliers. “We also work with smaller Tier 2 suppliers, with whom we have strategic relationships.” Geographically Officine Vica has customers all over the world. In 2016 50 per cent of sales were in Italy, 38 per cent in the rest of Europe and 12 per cent in America (North and South). “We are increasingly keeping a very close eye on new market opportunities and are always looking at ways of increasing our market presence.

“Our suppliers are very important to us and we aim to create lasting relationships with them. In fact, we try to create similar partnerships with suppliers to those which our clients have established with us – namely a structured growth plan, which obviously must be in line with what our customers require of us.

“Due to the highly competitive nature of the automotive sector, we have developed very strongly in terms of quality and skills at various levels. This is accompanied by a high degree of flexibility, as well as competitive prices. The automotive market is the hardest that you can imagine. Having been able to achieve these results in such a competitive market, we really believe that we are fully capable of entering other sectors, which do not yet display these competitive features. We are equipped with superior skills to do this, but we have to evaluate what these sectors have to offer us. Some of those identified did not offer the volumes to entice us to enter them. Others seem to be more interesting for a structured automotive supplier such as us, for instance the renewable energy industry. I am thinking specifically of the wind power segment.” n