The challenge

The RP Santini Group produces and sells mechanical small parts. Founded in the early 1950s by Pierino Santini, it includes companies:

• RP Santini Srl, which produces turned parts in the catalog or designed on customer request;
• RP Rubinetteria Parmense di Santini Pierino & C. Snc, which carries out commercial and marketing activities.

The collaboration with SMILE-DIH and the University of Parma foresees, until 31/12/2020, the performance of two specific activities:

• business reorganization support;
• support for digitization from an Industry 4.0 perspective.

The Solution

The intervention was conducted in five phases.

First phase

The finished product codes were divided into different management methods based on market needs:

• improving the profile of customer orders in quantity and frequency;
• selecting management logics most suited to the order profile;
• by assigning order profiles and respective codes to the individual machines.

Second phase

• application of the theory of constraints to increase production and turnover.

Third phase

• mapping and re-engineering of processes with a view to corporate reorganization and ERP update/replacement.

Fourth phase

• building customized reports for efficient process monitoring.

Fifth phase

• creation and calculation of similarity indices to simulate the format change times of codes never carried out (number of possible setups: approx. 4 mil, over 20 positions per setup).