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 Developing
itself from the 1950’s onward, the mechanical engineering
sector provides a solid base for the Modenese economy, producing
machinery, mechanical components, and processing plant tools.
Various mid-sized companies are based in the area, specializing
in their small market sectors and characterized by high-technology,
entrepreneurialism, and a willingness to introduce innovative
technologies.
There are also many small businesses operating in this industrial
tapestry, working on the production of components and actual finished
products. In all the products produced are as diverse as machines
and fittings for the ceramics industry, to wood-working machines,
to automatic packaging machines. The machinery sector is divided
into different sectors of production for tractors, small self-propelled
machines, harvesting, irrigating machines and machines for zootechnics:
earth-moving and digging machines, building machines. There are
also machines for moving miscellaneous material and loading it
on vehicles.
The household electrical product and oil-pressure areas are meaningful
because they also involve products used in the manufacture, control
and use of fluid power.
Other meaningful sections are: metal processing tool machines,
industrial electronics and automation, earth-moving and digging
machines, production of cookers, and heating and conditioning
tools, production of transformers and electric engines, industrial
balances, mechanics and instruments.
Not completely dissimilar from other sectors in the region, the
sector has developed through spin-off between technicians and
designers, who went into business after having intuited new areas
of request and different ways of bettering already existing products.
Various factors have been responsible for the growth of the sector:
the prescence of a good network of sub-contractors, on whom the
new entrepreneurs could depend for the production of component
parts, and reducing the fixed costs required to go into business;
the working culture of the working man was of great impact, most
of the new entrepreneurs came from working class backgrounds and
as such reinvestment in the companies was high; the professionalism
and experience of this kind of production on the part of many
of the region’s metalshop workers from before the Second
World War, coupled with the theoretical knowledge acquired in
the technical schools of the day.
Today, the mechanical engineering and machinery sector is made
up of over 3,400 businesses in the province, employing 32,200
people. The annual turnover is estimated to be about 6.7 billion
Euro,
of which approximately 30% is sold on worldwide international
markets.
Many of these businesses have become market leaders, with efficient
international distribution and some of the most modern robotic
and computerised technology available. It is however the sector
itself which increases competition, thanks to the increase in
specialisation, the importance given to quality and product reliability,
and the technical competence and innovative management present
in and around Modena.
The demand characteristics of many mechanical products are dominated
by high diversity and particular client relationships. These work
in such a way as to ensure that the smaller businesses safeguard
their share of the market.
Nevertheless, over the last few years, various growth strategies
based on dimensional factors have been adopted, and have led to
the formation of industrial groups which in some cases have even
crossed frontiers. This has given businesses the possibility of
offering a broad range of products and even integrated systems.
From this point of view two types of business can be distinguished,
particulary concerning some sectors: small fittings producers,
and those specialised in the production of individual machines
and components. The first, generally of greater dimensions, sell
complete plants which they produce themselves, or buy in from
another source. Whereas the second sells components, or individual
machines, partly, to engineering plants and partly, directly to
the consumer. For as much as they lack, these lastly mentioned
businesses, with a series of agreements between themselves still
manage to offer a final product on international markets.
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