Testi Group: a single view of production efficiency

The context

From the first family workshop, founded more than 90 years ago in Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella, to the four manufacturing companies of today, Testi Group is one of Italy's leading natural stone producers, known internationally. It was the first European group in the marble market to obtain ISO 9001 quality certification in its vision 2000 revision.

The Group offers a complete production cycle: from selling natural slabs to producing floors, cladding, stairs, columns and design pieces such as fountains and sculptures, through to on-site surveys, design, testing and installation for interiors and exteriors. With an innovative machine fleet and latest-generation tooling, constantly renewed and checked at every stage of work, the company was looking for a single solution for production control at its Rivoli Veronese site, which also houses the "Lastre Marmo Granito" showroom.

The project

Testi Group chose the IDA application to monitor the performance of the machines used across the production stages: saws and multiwire for cutting, milling, drilling and shaping; polishing lines for finishing; and the scanner used to scan marble slabs and build the barcode inventory. The 4.0 machines were connected to a single control centre, with Energy Meters installed to monitor consumption on the most energy-hungry machines and CO₂eq emissions under Scope 2. IDA is the base station from which to extract production data (order progress, consumption, times, costs), keep track of maintenance, download periodic reports and set up notifications and alarms.

The results

Control through IDA made it possible to track the quality of finished pieces and the wear on tooling, from the first cuts to cataloguing the product in inventory. Monitoring consumption and its costs during production improved the planning and control work done by the administrative team, especially where activity-based full costing and product cost control systems are used in make-to-order production and continuous flow processes.

What comes next

The Group operates through several plants dedicated to the different stages of processing, including the sawmill, the polishing and resin treatment site and the workshop where special projects are developed. IDA reads any protocol, so the solution scales: production control can extend to new devices and machines as needed, for instance to water and compressed air consumption.