Toppazzini purchased a customized management system based on their needs and designed to respond to future developments of the company and the steady business growth, after 16 years of mutual collaboration with RTS
For over 60 years, Toppazzini has been a reference point in the supply of corrugated packaging in the North-East.
Founded in 1955 by Antonio Toppazzini, who had the intuition to undertake this activity, the company immediately proposed itself as a partner in support of the emerging industries of the area: shoe and ham factories and companies in the wine sector for which packaging represented both an element of product protection but also a means of brand promotion.
In the ‘60 the founder’s sons Umberto and Bruno joined the company (Bruno left the company in 2005).
The continuous and constant growth has led the Toppazzini family, always at the helm of the company, to equip itself in 1980 with a first line for production of corrugated cardboard, thanks to which the production process has been verticalized, starting from the paper web.
This has allowed the company to expand its production capacity, realize important economies of scale as well as freeing itself from the dynamics of external suppliers: all key factors for subsequent growth.
Today Umberto Toppazzini is president of the company, supported by his son Antonio as vice president and commercial director.
Toppazzini reaches a meaningful success: 100 million square meters of cardboard
Starting in 2008, the company is the protagonist of a plan to expand its production capacity and space for logistics in order to conquer new market shares, focusing mainly on Triveneto industry: furniture, home appliances, mechanical engineering, plastic, food & beverage sectors.
Today Toppazzini is the most important supplier of corrugated packaging for the Nord-Italy plant of one of the biggest Italian breweries, with which it boasts a solid twenty-year relationship; since 2013 it has also received the status of supplier from one of the most important producers of furniture and household supplies in the world, to which Toppazzini supplies packaging and cardboard products that the customer uses for internal use as a replacement for pallets.
Toppazzini has also made a series of important technological investments starting from 2009 with the acquisition of a new BOBST Masterflex L, a flexo printing machine for cardboard together with a BOBST Mastercut, a flat-bed die cutter, which was followed recently by the purchase of a BOBST 924 FFG casemaker with 6-color high-resolution printing and an HBL rotary die cutter. The new Agnati Vantage corrugator with a 2500mm light dates back to 2012/2013 and the construction of the new shipping warehouse allowed Toppazzini to increase its production capacity.
In 2018 Toppazzini expects to easily overcome the production of 100 million square meters of cardboard: production that for over 95% is destined to meet internal production needs while the remaining 5% is dedicated to sale to customers who use special qualities and compositions.
The current site of Villanova di San Daniele (UD) with its 26 thousand square meters of surface, now has about 150 employees and develops a turnover that for 2018 will reach about 50 million euros with further development forecasts in the coming years; data that confirm a trend that the company has been showing since 2013 with growth rates of 15-20% per year and which foresees a jump of a further 25% for 2018.
A decidedly important production flow to manage, with different complexities to cope with, so it becomes strategic to rely on an adequate IT and management architecture.
Toppazzini’s partner for management software solutions dedicated to the world of cardboard for about 16 years is RTS Sistemi Informativi, which has followed and supported Toppazzini’s growth path, which has also been influential in the development of some solutions that RTS has subsequently finalized and made available on the market.
We met Marco Dittaro, who supports the ownership of the company and together with him we deepened the experience of Toppazzini in the management field.
Face to face with Marco Dittaro, IT manager at Toppazzini
You are using RTS solutions since 2002. What is the reason for choosing RTS as a partner
for software management of your business processes?
“We had been thinking for some time that the management systems we were equipped with, would not allow us to plan a development path.
The coincidence with the historical moment of transition of IT systems from Lira to Euro, in front of which we were aware of not having adequate IT tools, was the occasion that led us to choose RTS. To solve this immediate transition, but with the aim of undertaking a review process of the entire management structure, whose need was perceived as fundamental to establish the control of the processes we wanted.
Hence the decision to rely on RTS that we had known for some time and whose reputation was already well known in our sector, as a leading company and a profound connoisseur of business and problems related to production and processing of corrugated cardboard.
I remember that at the beginning the change was not simple, as always happens when a new information system is introduced.
Our requests were immediately directed to a high customization of software solutions and RTS responded positively, managing to meet our needs. In this way, a relationship of mutual collaboration was established so that, over the years, the solutions adopted by RTS were born from our suggestions, a symptom of a very dynamic supplier-partner relationship and willing to accept the suggestions of the customers”.
What are the most appreciated features of RTS solutions?
“RTS is extremely specialized in the cardboard sector and knows well everything that revolves around production, technical specifications, production planning and production data. All this today refers to Industry 4.0, with data management, and it is not new to us. Thanks to RTS solutions, for some years we have become accustomed to managing and processing data to monitor business processes.
With this in mind, we greatly appreciate the strong focus that RTS always has on order centrality, on the easy use of data and information, which can be shared by every single operator.
The information is immediately available and can be compared at any time and allows a complete control of the processes as well as being available for a re-elaboration with Business Intelligence systems.
Finally, the modular architecture of RTS solutions gives us the opportunity to face new needs by inserting the modules in our management at the right time”.
What are the areas of your activities in which RTS systems have brought the greatest benefits in terms of profit growth and/or waste reduction?
“Thanks to the partnership with RTS we managed to have total control of production planning, obtaining return data useful to create reports able to guide the company in identifying inefficiencies.
In the relationship with RTS, there were three fundamental moments that allowed us to grow: the first was the installation of RTSv8 and the scheduler with box manufacturing data monitoring with a very intuitive graphical interface; the second step involved the integration of the new corrugator and peripheral systems for handling of cardboard and, finally, the recent installation of Easystock for the management of locations, handling and shipping of finished products, thanks to which we can now program and ship daily about 50-60 journey forms without any problem.
With this last investment we have also practically canceled the errors in entry of transport documents (about 16,000 in 2017 with forecast in 2018 of reaching 20,000)”.
How do you evaluate RTS support and update services?
“The fundamental functions, including management of the finished product, planning of the shipments, production and the relative interfaces on board of the machine, are highly reliable and RTS is well aware that such “critical “services must always be correctly functioning.
As an example of reliability, it is worth mentioning the case of our EasyStock system, which has been operating at full capacity for 2 and a half years, during which we had 2 problems that required the intervention of RTS, both resolved within 15 minutes from our reporting.
About emergency interventions it is right to confirm that we are extremely satisfied, because for our organization, so complex and structured, it would be dramatic to stay still for just an hour.
Also, with regard to the partners that RTS has chosen for hardware and plant equipment (wi-fi, hardware on trolley board) we have interacted with companies of primary importance, who have analyzed our needs very well and proposed highly qualitative and performing solutions.
Certainly, there are also margins for improvement on which RTS will have to commit in the future, I would suggest to RTS to work on customer response times on new projects, especially if customized, and on assistance of daily maintenance.
I recently spoke with Massimo Partisani, sales manager and with Robertino Piazza, RTS operations manager who informed me about the projects they have in the pipeline and I really appreciated the RTS philosophy of building a solid platform on which to develop the various modules and applications.
Today, the software houses that offer ‘monolithic’ management solutions in my opinion will have no future. I consider RTS’s choice to integrate systems and to focus on production management, a correct vision.
For example, I was able to appreciate the start of collaboration with Zucchetti regarding the financial administration to be integrated into its solutions”.
What are your future IT innovation projects?
“Such an important growth has obviously created the need to expand our logistics space, which today are beginning to be lacking. In the business plan we are drafting, new logistic spaces are planned, but also a production expansion, with more space and the acquisition of new machinery. It is clear that this will also involve the investment in the appropriate management software solutions to connect the new machines to the workflow and to the management of existing production”.
Would you recommend RTS to one of your colleagues?
“Our relationship with RTS is transparent and positive; companies in the sector have already come to see our solutions, and we have become available to provide them with practical advice to optimize the investment and to live an important transition such as the installation of a new management system as a moment of positive growth for the whole company.
RTS has a solid history behind it, represents the present and has interesting projects for the future”.