“Our competence and Italian technology are going to conquer the Asian markets” saidCiofalo Lorenzo, CEO of Microlys, an Ivrea company NVD Group (together with TIESSE router vendor).
Microlys, established in 1981, specializes in the design and construction of print heads , the common needle heads used in banking applications, rather than in printing business POS.
Key4Biz: “We are in Ivrea, at Microlys, an NVD Group company and we are talking about Microlys with the CEO, Lorenzo Ciofalo. What does Microlys do, what is its role in the group and what are its main activities in Italy and abroad.”
Lorenzo Ciofalo: “Microlys is a company founded in 1981, since a decade or so part of the NVD Group, and is focused on the design and manufacture of impact print heads. Impact print heads are the dot matrix print heads commonly used in banking applications or in printing POS receipts. They are based on an electromechanical technology developed many years ago, which has reached a certain level of maturity in Western markets but which is very present and even growing in Asian markets. So Microlys today is a company that maintains a very important position, albeit limited due to the size of the market here in the West, and in recent years has been successfully developing its positioning and development on Asian markets, where mainly the competitors and players are all Asian, so Japanese, Korean or Chinese.”
Key4Biz: “What is the Italian technology and Italian expertise component in everything Microlys does? ”
Lorenzo Ciofalo: “The industrial positioning in those markets is mainly of a logistics nature, so the fact of being able to access a very different market with large volumes, rather than small volumes, and therefore suppliers which not only cost less but also have the characteristic of being accustomed to working on very high scale volumes, allows us to achieve those targets that are required to be competitive compared to Chinese or Japanese competitors. But of course all the know-how and engineering remains here in Italy, as well as management of all the business aspects. So the Prime-Contractor always remains Italy.”
Key4Biz: “Microlys is part of the NVD Group, a Group to which Tiesse belongs. And Microlys and Tiesse are linked by a very close level of operations. What does Microlys do for Tiesse?”
Lorenzo Ciofalo: “Microlys supports Tiesse in the manufacture of its devices. Tiesse entirely designs and implements the devices it sells, it manages all the procurement side and therefore the entire supply chain is under its control, but all the purely industrial aspects, related therefore to the manufacture, assembly and testing of the final product are managed in Contract-Manufacturing by Microlys, which basically uses parts of its existing structure to make this process more efficient and, in short, also provides the cooperation typical of a group.
We have three production lines. One is mainly used for products less focused on dedicated applications, more generic, so it is a very automated production line, which allows everything to be managed, all the automation aspects, with proprietary software, so we develop not only the solutions but also the equipment which is then used to make the lines much more automated and efficient and has, also in the final assembly and shipment processes, a certain level of automation that we have achieved over time.
Then we have another two production lines, one dedicated to Enel products, and therefore also certified by the end user, and another with more diverse characteristics with products more dedicated to the gaming world.
All product testing and inspection processes are performed in-house. 100% of our equipment is inspected and tested before being placed in the field. The tools we use to do these activities are tools developed by our internal EDP, so they are tools developed by Tiesse in collaboration with our system engineers and therefore proprietary tools, which are then of course integrated in the various information systems to thus obtain the production information. This provides a very high level of automation and at the same time a high level of control over defects; consider that we have very few returns from the field precisely because in the testing and inspection phases all products are practically tested.”
Key4Biz: “Thank you Lorenzo Ciofalo, Chief Executive Officer of Microlys, NVD Group.”
Lorenzo Ciofalo: “My pleasure.”