Meccanica Ponte Chiese: Top performance and flexibility
The highly flexible production infrastructure by Meccanica Ponte Chiese allows for fast response times to customer demands and profitable production of smaller batches.
It is almost eight o’clock in the evening, the table is reserved at Trattoria Al Frate in Brescia and a culinary, cultural evening is about to begin. But beforehand Mirko Ferraboli is in the production hall checking the new processing centre, making sure the automatic night-shift manufacturing can proceed without any hitches.
Giovanni Ferraboli, the founder of Meccanica Ponte Chiese, has run the family business since 1973, where his wife and his three children also work. Since then, the former mechanical workshop has developed into a company that machines medium and large work pieces made from cast iron, aluminium and steel. With 15 employees, the company is a manageable size and is able to respond to customer demands quickly and maintain profitability with smaller batch sizes due to the highly flexible production infrastructure.
The new machining centre, MCM Clock Tank, was installed in January 2006 and is up and running 24 hours a day. The second identical machine was started up in May 2007 and is also an independent machining centre. Both machines are controlled by Axium Power CNCs and the NUM HP Drive servodrives and NUM motors from the BPH series carry out the commands. In addition, both types are used outside the machining centre, such as for the tool magazine for up to 400 tools, which was extended to 800 tools using the second machine.
The three-storey automated pallet store, which is also extended for the second machine, supplies both machining centres with the required work pieces in accordance with the production plan. The system is controlled by Axium Power – just as Axium Power for the machining centre – which is part of the MCM production system. “The skill of the technical staff, the user-friendliness and the performance continues to impress us” says Giovanni Ferraboli. In 1988 the first machine was equipped with an NUM system and it still performs at a competitive rate even today. “NUM guarantees us a faster and more efficient customer service, which we heavily rely on as small and flexible company.”
Meccanica Ponte Chiese supplies customers in the textile, earthmoving, nautics and pressure technology industries, with names such as Graziano and Iveco, which are known all over Europe. State of the art measuring and control systems guarantee the quality requirements. Short delivery times and low production costs are also part of the customer requirements. Thanks to the flexibility of Axium Power, they could increase productivity and guarantee efficiency despite the huge variety of work pieces in small batches. “Experience is the best way to stay competitive. That’s why we chose NUM.” summarises Gianluca Ferraboli.
(May 2007)