Insight

Commitments to quality, modularity, excellence, reliability, customer centricity, continuous improvement, innovation, team working, and employee engagement, are the core values that have been defining SACMA since 1939 and made it a world leading manufacturer of multi-station cold forming machines for high-precision metal components and fasteners. 

At its headquarters in Limbiate, through an insourced, fully vertically integrated and modular production system, SACMA Group is able to machine mechanical parts with the highest standards for precision and raw material quality. Each workpiece is then assembled in-house and becomes part of either a SACMA multi-station cold forming machine, an Ingramatic flat die thread roller or HS ASPE tapping machine, which SACMA points out then share the same destiny – accompanying customers for the next half-century in their workshop and rewarding them with the highest output possible across three shifts per day. 

SACMA Group is recognised as an industrial ecosystem for the fastener and cold forming industry, which is able to offer cutting edge technologies from process design through 3D simulation, multi-station cold forming equipment (SACMA), flat die thread rollers (Ingramatic) all the way to dedicated CNC machines for secondary operations after forming and threading (HS ASPE). Anything that goes in between these steps requires stable, high efficiency loading and moving systems. For this SACMA Group supplies reliable solutions through its controlled company Tecno Lift. 

Global presence

This all adds up to five interconnected production sites, 300 employees worldwide, five foreign branches with local after sales staff (USA, China, Taiwan, Germany and Brazil), 24 agencies, 83 years of history, 24/7 on-site and remote service, plus 11 technical service centres – all under one group. 

To add to this, SACMA Group has also looked to continue to develop over the last two years, with the company investing 10% of its total turnover in new plants, buildings and new activities. “For sure the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated our strategy to be closer and closer to all the customers buying our equipment,” mentions SACMA. “Thanks to our €25 million total inventory, our group has been able to honour all the contracts received in 2020 and 2021.”

SACMA Group also intensified its presence around the world in hiring local technicians to install equipment – including in Taiwan, India, China, Turkey, Poland, USA and France. As a big achievement, during the last two years, SACMA Group shipped more than 200 new pieces of equipment around the world without sending any technicians from Italy. “This is a demonstration of our powerful organisation, which is spreading our technologies even in difficult times,” points out SACMA.

ovide the technical services expected from this country – with an ever increasing demand for more SACMA machines. The different brands of SACMA implemented a programme of training for each of the technicians joining the organisation in order to be more effective on the local market – with the branch constantly updated with new technologies to support the customers. 

Meeting challenges

To ensure the shipment of its machineries, and being a major player for shipping large equipment around the world, SACMA’s logistics department works closely with its partners to guarantee on time deliveries. “Of course, the cost of shipment has been increasing according to the market, but thanks to our ability to organise advance shipments, we have been able to manage this situation,” highlights SACMA. “However, we have seen a variety of increases, especially for shipments to North America. For instance, even the cost of the seaworthy packaging has increased, due to the value of wood. This made us optimise the layout of our shipments (see below), which has led to improvements that we will adopt as a new standard for the future.”

It was not just the logistical challenges SACMA needed to manage, there was also the price increases in raw materials and components, with supply chain disruptions sometimes creating stoppage of machines in the different SACMA assembly lines – due to a handful of missing components. “Thanks to our organisation, and our massive stock of parts and serial production strategy, we were able to quickly rectify any situations and ensured the parts arrived at the assembly divisions perfectly on time,” states SACMA. “With the electronic and electrical components, the situation is a little more difficult but still under control. We have anticipated our schedules to order the components early to be sure to get them on time in our assembly lines.”

SACMA’s purchasing department has also been reinforced to help with the ‘lake of components’ in order to not penalise the assembly divisions too much. “For the future, we are not expecting a better situation, so we have invested in additional automatic and robotised storage systems, dedicated to the electronic and electrical components, to increase our stockage and guarantee at list one year of production.”

Recently the cost of the energy has also increased and is still unpredictable, due to the tension between Ukraine and Russia. “This situation penalised our organisation with some suppliers of materials in trouble and the shutting down their plants impacting our deliveries,” reports SACMA. “But once again, thanks to our serial production and large warehouse, we are managing this situation with serenity. Regarding our internal needs, our total budget for buying energy has been multiplied by a factor of three.”

SACMA continues: “Despite these difficult times we have sold many solutions to our customers, especially in the local Italian market due to the government’s Industry 4.0 programme to help companies invest in new machineries. This means that despite the economic condition, the Italian market has been very active regarding the investment in headers, threaders and tapping machines. However, we expect the Italian market to slow down in 2023 as the Industry 4.0 programme will be reduced.” 

To handle all of these circumstances, SACMA Group has intensified its strategy to keep production in its factories and to utilise only prime European components. To do that, and to remain competitive, the company has invested in additional cutting-edge technologies, with more than 100,000m² of plant – with 60,000m² covered for manufacturing, storage and assembling – helping SACMA Group to provide no less than 120 machines per year. 

New investments and equipment

As part of its strategy SACMA Group has also invested in new equipment with additional Mazak machineries as FMS (Flexible Machines Systems), which are milling and turning machines equipped with the last generation of robotics for loading and unloading. 

This means that SACMA’s factories can run during the night shifts without any labour costs. “This strategy has always been applied in our divisions but we have looked to implement equipment with more high-tech solutions to speed up the production, with optimal ergonomic conditions for our operators, as well as introduce machines equipped with automatic loading/unloading systems,” highlights SACMA.

In-line with its continuous focus on improving its manufacturing division, in 2023 SACMA will start the construction of an additional 4,000m² building, which will be added to the current 40,000m² and enable the company to install even more new machineries in the coming years. 

When it comes to the management of the business SACMA has also made a large investment in new SAP software, so it can control all its branches around the world, along with its five factories. “The SAP system will be installed within all of our departments,” states SACMA. “We have started at our headquarters with the financial, commercial and purchasing departments, with the target to be ready by June 2023. The system will then be applied to our R&D, assembly and production departments by 2024.”

Over the last two years SACMA has also been working on its new series of combined headers models – SP18 and SP28 – and has launched the 1D2B combined header model KSP12-R to satisfy the fastener market – with the machine able to produce, in one shot, screws and bolts from wire to finished product.

When it comes to combined headers, Ingramatic has been focused on new technical projects to help customers making fasteners to produce with a ‘Lean’ concept. “Our Ingramatic division is now supplying combined machines consisting of a rotary station combined with a flat die rolling station,” explains SACMA. “This solution allows the operator to load the blanks just one time and still make more shapes in one shot. We have seen a very large interest from the market in this solution – allowing the reduction of WIP stock, machines and loading/unloading equipment.”

Ingramatic produces approximately 35 machines annually and has invested in its R&D with more engineers, and hired additional technicians for the assembly division, to help meet the requests of the market. The company has also opened a new area with robotic storage dedicated to the electronic and hardware department – following the strategy of SACMA.

Since 2020 SACMA Group has also worked on integrating HS ASPE into the group – with the company dealing with automatic machinery for secondary operations, such as tapping, turning, machining and general automation. “We moved the company to a brand new plant in Ciriè close to Turin, where we are implementing the same rules applied in our factories in designing and manufacturing machinery – with all the components made in serial production,” mentions SACMA. “By the end of 2022, HS ASPE will have shipped 22 machines compared to an average of 10 to 12 during the last 10 years. Due to the success of the tapping machines, we expect to reach 30 machines very soon.”

The final company within the group is Tecno Lift, which is also growing – through its range of ancillaries to move the parts, including conveyors, vertical elevators, vibrating hopers, lotifiers, bin tilting systems and any kind of loading systems. “In 2023, we will further increase the capacity of the company and supply more units to the group and even to customers buying the units directly from Tecno Lift.”

Thanks to the combination of companies, SACMA Group is able to supply increasingly complete lines of machineries from the header, threader to sometimes the secondary operation machine to deliver the finished part. “The pandemic and the energy crisis have put manufacturers of machinery in a difficult position, but at SACMA Group, thanks to our proven strategy, we are still one of the most reliable suppliers in the world,” concludes SACMA. “Despite the wordwide situation, 2023 will be a great time for SACMA Group to finalise all the projects we started over these last two years and to continue to supply an even wider range of machines for the fastener market.”