Scaligera Guarnizioni: a multi-level energy map with 50 sensors

The context

Scaligera Guarnizioni S.r.l., founded in 1986 in Ronco all'Adige, in the province of Verona, produces custom industrial gaskets. Quality that comes from technology and from the strength of the team: over 60 qualified people and a state-of-the-art machine fleet with die cutters, presses, waterjet systems and CNC milling machines. The catalogue ranges from solid and expanded rubber gaskets to metal blanks and thermal and acoustic insulation panels.

"What does it really cost to produce this gasket?" Knowing the true cost of an order, including machine, operator, energy and actual time, was the company's goal. Already operationally sound, with a production planning system, historical data and rigorously managed orders, it knew that in a market of high volumes and thin margins the real cost per order is the KPI that makes the difference. Alongside it sat smaller challenges: energy waste hard to locate, no way to monitor plant safety remotely, machines whose cutting speed could not be controlled and fragmented production data.

The project

The project was progressive. First came the energy map, 50 sensors spread over three levels: the main incoming supply, the electrical panels by area and each production machine directly. Integration with the ERP made it possible to connect orders to operators and machines. Every waterjet machine was fitted with monitoring of its feed potentiometer, to guarantee cutting speed performance, and tooling is tracked by number of cycles run and date of last sharpening, removing the risk of breakage on high-volume orders. The fire alarm panel also joined the IDA ecosystem: alarms now arrive in real time, with the option to act remotely.

The results

The company can see what it costs to produce a single item, who produces it best and in how long. It reduces energy waste and knows the ideal time for an order, so quotes are more accurate. The real added value, though, came from unexpected insights. Monitoring exposed an inefficiency in the solar plant: every weekend the system shut down on an overvoltage alarm, wiping out energy production. Once the anomaly was visible, the company carried out a targeted overhaul and recovered the return on that investment. Analysis of performance by operator then revealed significant variability in the team's skills: from there came an internal mentoring programme, with the strongest operators working alongside colleagues, raising the average level across production.

What comes next

Next steps include a production planner built into IDA, to manage the start, pause and end of each job more precisely. In parallel Scaligera Guarnizioni is exploring the use of an artificial intelligence assistant able to generate a daily executive summary with analysis, anomalies and operational recommendations.