The performance of technology has become critical to business success. Here’s how a General Manager can focus on the technological function on a company’s strategic priorities and always keep it at the forefront
Machinery, like in the past as of today, constitutes a fundamental pillar of the industrial sector. Modern manufacturing is an increasingly automated and technology-driven industry. It is based on the application of advanced technologies and systems that are changing the face of production in ways that were unthinkable just a few decades ago. Recent research has shown that this sector is in fact characterized as a medium-high category in terms of technological intensity and as a knowledge-intensive industry. On the threshold of its fiftieth anniversary, Bibo is the first company in Italy and very first in the entire world to produce and design machines exclusively for the leather goods sector, passing from the first manual machines for dyeing, cutting, gluing and punching, to the current fully automatic ones. We met its founder, Gianfranco Biffignandi , at the latest edition of Simac Tanning Tech ( a fair in Milan) who showed us, through his machines, how the digitization of production is so advanced as to be called Industry 4.0, and why it represents the fourth industrial revolution driven by data, connectivity and computer systems.
Your company name says « Officina Meccanica BIBO srl » (Mechanical Workshop Bibo) and your stand is full of latest generation machinery…
“Since 1974 we have been producing machines and automatic systems for the leather goods and belt industries with always innovative proposals designed to obtain the highest quality of the finished product, enhance production and simplify human intervention. We wanted to bring some of our latest creations to the fair. The first is called SP3CM/R-MT: a rather complicated name but in reality it is a machine created to improve production. It is an automatic stamping machine for leather intended for the making of bags, shoe wallets and labels which, in addition to all the already known movements we had on the others, is also self-adjustable in depth. It enters the leather more or less depending on the type of cliché it mounts. Being a multi-position machine like moulds, it can operate on various dimensions. Just think that if the machine had the same pressure on all the moulds (printing forms), one would enter more, another less, while thus remaining completely homogeneous. Its equipment also includes a rotating head with a double mold and a programmable printing device with colored paper. Last but not least, it can obviously be interconnected to the factory IT and logistics systems with remote loading of specific instructions or programs”.
What else does Bibo offer?
“We could not leave out the new cutting machines for belts understood as shaping the tip and the holes, the measurement and the cutting of the final part of the belt where the barb (the tip of the buckle) is placed which takes place on the metal part that is no longer on certain nylons. What does this allow you to have? Really clean shaping and drilling. An example is the BT90-110.
We have presented trances that have nothing to do with other similar solutions on the market because they have completely new characteristics. The “Trancetta FP-20” is an example of this because it allows for the drilling and shaping of the ends of a leather or synthetic strip in a single phase. The innovative worktable is characterized by an adjustable rear guide that can allow you to set the width of the strip to be processed. In addition to other technical pluses, an energy- saving motor is installed on this machine. And finally, we brought some automatic belt loop cutters”.
How is the market responding to all these innovations of yours?
“The impression is excellent, even if we came out very positive at the start to the year. Let’s hope this trend continues.”