Question: It’s been a year since you’ve been appointed as the technical director at DMF, how was the last year?
Answer: I really appreciated the trust that DMF placed in me with the technical control of the company. Obviously, the challenge during this past year has been even more complicated, as conditioned by the Covid-19 situation. Coordinate all developments projects, in terms of timing and resources, at the moment being available, was not easy.
Question: So, are you telling me that there have been significant impacts in carrying out the activities you mentioned to me?
Answer: I would say yes but, despite everything positive, as we still managed the emergency through the commitment of the resources coming from the production, to meet company and customers needs to ensure the development of new components within the settled time frame.
Question: What about your team?
Answer: The current engineering team in DMF has recently been strengthened with experienced resources, coming from both IGT and Aerospace markets; following this way we have covered a further “gap” concerning development of new products (NPI) and also in the area of complex and non-complex ceramic cores, as a result a acquisition of know-how in the Tooling and Wax area. Last but not least, an aeronautical engineer has joined the team, a junior profile whose openness end energy, we are sure will help us to achieve our future goals.
Question: What news brought 2020 with it?
Answer: We have worked as a team with the sales department, strengthened connections with key customers, gained trust of some new important customers and acquired new strategic projects.
Question: Therefore, increasingly challenging goals ?
Answer: As previously mentioned, the acquisition of “senior” resources, coming directly from the “Investment Casting” world, has recently opened up new horizons for us; we were able to follow up on RFQ which in the past we had to decline mainly due to lack of skills.
Question: What have you focused on, to be so competitive?
Answer: Surely the concept of time to market in this critical moment was the most important aspect and the main objective that put on the table in the discussion with customers. In fact, everyone expects increasingly demanding developments times, in order to be, in turn, more competitive with the end users of their products. To do this, we have introduced the “Rapid Prototyping” (SLA/SSL) technology even more extensively, which has allowed us to have significant reactions from our process, in significantly shorter times than traditional ones, making us more attractive to customers.
Question: And what about 2021, what is the target you have set yourself?
Answer: The main objective is certainly to acquire new products to ensure continuity within DMF by consolidating our strengths, already highlighted during the last year, but if I had to indicate “something” to focus on for 2021, this would be definitely the introduction of the “Core 3D Printing” technology, or the possibility of producing ceramic cores through a 3D printer. This would allow us to further optimize the development processes of new products and make us even more competitive on the market.