We believe that this statement can be summed up as the “ethics” of Working Process, a company specializing in the production of highly automated machines and lines for the production of windows and doors that, in just over twenty years, has earned a place in the sun in the ranking of the most prestigious brands in the sector.
We had wanted to meet Massimo Schiavetta for a long time, but commitments and events have always prevented us from having a chat in peace, leaving aside the “usual” talks about a particular technology or the most recent, important order.
We wanted to chat with him – who is certainly the “technical” heart and soul of Working Process (and not only…) – to understand how the company of which he is co-owner has managed to shuffle the cards, to propose a real “technical model” different from all the others (until the others realized that this was the right direction, perhaps the rightest…), how he imagines the future of this segment, what he has left behind.
And we succeeded – thanks to the support of Filippo Schegginetti, partner and marketing and communication manager of the company – only by “framing” him in a very rare moment of pause in one of the most recent fairs in which Working Process participated, promising him that we would be very fast.
And so, in about ten minutes, we put on paper, but it would be better to say on tape, a series of ideas, statements, convictions, choices that we are sure you will read with great attention.
VISION
“Working Process has always been involved in “high technologies”, if we can use this definition, a market segment that, although it maintains a certain amount of unpredictability, still responds to investment strategies and programs that do not strictly look at the current moment, and this approach, even in a “reflective” moment like the current one, allows us to have an order book that is still very important.
A situation that reflects what is also our way of being: choosing to always invest, to never stop, not even in moments of “tiredness”, in order to be the first to start again!
In other words, we are the partners of companies that want to have the tools to differentiate themselves, of those who do not only think about having technologies with which to optimize production, but who see in our technologies the tool to make absolute quality that helps to sell their products better and allows them to always be able to propose new ideas”.
You are considered among those who have revolutionized the window and door sector…
“To tell the truth, all we did is bet on our vision, on our way of understanding the production of windows and doors. A method that twenty, thirty years ago seemed absolutely incorrect and incoherent, but which has instead shown how much we have been able to anticipate the future, to understand in which direction the market would go.
We have been the pioneers of a new way of producing windows and doors to which both machine builders and window manufacturers have gradually adapted, to the point of becoming the reference production system.
Many, if not all, have followed us on this path over the years, although technological gaps cannot be erased in a matter of days, especially if those who mark the path have the will and strength to never stop innovation, to reaffirm the desire to always be able to show a concrete competitive advantage over competitors. You see, in Working Process we are always ready for what will be the next step…”.
But the world of windows and doors is ready to face investments that have become more important, which may not be for all budgets…
“Let me say that the world of windows and doors has literally fallen in love with this way of producing, and certainly not because we were the promoters, but because it was immediately understood that this “intelligent revolution” would have shaken up a sector that had fallen too far behind and was losing important positions, because it was linked to a “know-how” that was disappearing day after day. Producing wooden doors and windows means knowing the raw material, how it must be processed and treated. An increasingly challenging choice in a world where there are fewer and fewer young people who want to make wood their profession.
We studied a system that would bring the wood closer to aluminum or plastic. We have chosen our name – Working Process – because it is the process, production seen as a whole, that is the object of our interest, of our research: we want to eliminate differences and achieve an important level of automation, reducing operators and the need to have many different machines to make a single final product.
We did it. This is what those who have bought our solutions say, telling us that the machine, the system they have built with us, requires a limited contribution from the operators. A maximum of one or two people, freeing up energy to devote to other activities that have become increasingly important over the years, such as sales, marketing, presence on the territory, assembly, assistance…
And we are talking about technologies that can create windows of totally different shapes, virtually without any limits, made with geometric precision and a quality of finish that in the painting and assembly phase become a fundamental plus”.
“We don’t have any particular secrets,” Schiavetta continued, “other than having chosen to start not from the price that a machine must have to be sold, but from the desire to create a process that allows us to think about the finished product, what the end customer wants or the architect proposes rather than how to make it.
We understood that in order to “breathe new life” into the wooden window we had to look far ahead, define tools to build windows with characteristics that were very different from the past and that had in fact put the raw material wood in crisis. We started from these considerations to design our first machine and we did it at a time of great complexity in this market, confident that what we had to say would make us heard by many.
A path that has certainly not been easy, but which we have pursued with great will and above all with very clear ideas, starting from our philosophies “7P” (see box on page 00, ed.) and “MPE-Maximum profit everywhere”, at every stage of processing.
By reconciling these two inspiring principles, we have chosen the path to follow and over the years they have been filled with new meanings, first of all the “green” theme, because we have always paid the utmost attention to choosing solutions that can first of all reduce the energy needs of our plants, but also and above all the use of other machines, significantly reducing energy consumption”.
Mr. Schiavetta, you haven’t told me yet if this is for all budgets…
“You’re right, but I couldn’t answer without first showing you our path: buying our technologies certainly requires a major investment that today is not only within the reach of large companies. There is actually an entry threshold, but lower than one might think, because we were able to answer an important question, namely what was the “minimum technology” that we could propose without distorting our vision. We saw that going below a certain level would have prevented us from offering our customers a technology that would really enable them to work in a new way, and from there we started to define different answers, designed to allow everyone to equip themselves in a certainly different way but always obtaining a smart result, capable of projecting companies of any size into completely new scenarios: highly automated companies, with few staff, great flexibility, hyper-competitiveness on the market”.
But what was your most important intuition, the one that gave the “go” to Working Process?
“Understanding that the most advanced technology is always the human being and that therefore it was enough to make a machine that had characteristics as similar as possible, equipped with grippers that emulated human hands, capable of making constant, dynamic movements, with variable pressures; manipulators that are our arms, operating heads that reproduce and amplify flexibility and the ability to adapt to any situation of our body. Machines, allow me to add, that initially may even cost more than others but then, in the medium and long term, magically come to be the cheapest”.
What now? What remains to be done?
“We always respond to the requests of customers, of the time we live in. We are living in a season in which it is important to optimize products, address them to an increasingly wide audience, working on the price differentials that a material like wood still has.
The only certainty is that any further step forward will require the collaboration of all the players involved: the wooden window and door of tomorrow will certainly see technology manufacturers in the front row, but at their side there will be hardware manufacturers or glass manufacturers. An important evolution can never be created by just one, but it is necessary that everyone decides to focus together on something new. That’s exactly what happened when in 2000 we managed to convince the market that some things needed to be changed and we worked on it together with others who, like us, believed that it was possible to do something really different…”.
by Luca Rossetti
working-process.com
The “7 Ps” of Working Process
The philosophy of Working Process can be summarized in seven words, all beginning with letter “P”: Pre-finished, Pre-milled, Pre-squared, Prepared, Perfection, Profit, Performance.
