„Specialities from Florence“

Cecchi: Flexible production of small batch sizes for the fashion accessories industry

The great strength of Florence-based Cecchi s.r.l. lies in its outstanding versatility, which allows this family-owned company to handle very short-run customer projects with extremely tight turnaround times for its customers in the fashion sector. And as of very recently, the specialist for spring production has been able to react much more quickly to new component requests – thanks to a new RM-NC servo stamping and forming machine that cuts setup times from four down to an average of just two hours.

The area around Milan, Lecco and Bergamo in Lombardy in the north of Italy is actually the main center of the country’s metalworking industry. However, manufacturing companies can naturally also be found further south – for example in Florence, the home of Cecchi s.r.l. The company, which was founded in 1967 by Renato Cecchi, produces a wide range of springs and other small metal components that allow it to service the particular requirements of the regional market: “Florence is an important center for the fashion industry and many of our customers come from the fashion accessories sector,” explains Paolo Cecchi, CEO and son of the company’s founder. “It is a very fast-moving sector that only ever calls for relatively small batch sizes of between a few hundred up to 100,000 parts. However, our other thousand or so customers from the medical, oil and gas, electronics and lighting sectors, also place orders of much the same size,” adds CFO, Valeria Cecchi. She is the founder’s granddaughter and works together with her sister Bianca and cousin Elisa to ensure the general and everyday administration of the company.

Excellently positioned

Over the recent decades, Cecchi has adapted perfectly to the needs of its large customer base and the many different product requirements this brings with it: “One of our greatest strengths lies in our outstanding versatility that allows us to complete customer projects with short turnaround times,” stresses Valeria Cecchi. “We also have particularly close ties to our customers and, on top of all this, we offer full-service component manufacture from the initial idea, on to prototyping and toolmaking, and through to top-quality industrial parts manufacture.”

Restrictive setup times

The seven mechanical type RM 35 and RM 40 systems that Cecchi has acquired over the years make a vital contribution to the company’s high parts quality. The company has produced approximately 700 tools in-house for these machines. However, in the light of increasing product diversification, ever smaller batch sizes and growing component complexity, the existing Bihler solutions were starting to be pushed to the limit: “They are very reliable machines that always deliver perfect quality and we always found the throughputs to be perfectly satisfactory,” explains Valeria Cecchi. “Nevertheless, the long setup times were a drawback. For example, it could easily take us between four and eight hours to set up a single RM 40.”

Improvements in many areas

In order to achieve significant reductions in setup times and the associated costs, Cecchi invested in a new RM-NC servo stamping and forming machine, which arrived in the company at the end of 2022. And it did not take long for the company to reap the rewards of this investment. Paolo and Valeria Cecchi make the benefits clear: “Thanks to Bihler’s servo technology, our setup times have been reduced to just a few hours That alone represents an enormous saving in terms of time and costs. This means that we can react to customer requests much faster than before and that we are much more versatile in our production activities.” Cecchi also produces the tools for the new RM-NC itself – and here, again, it benefits from significant time and cost savings because the laborious task of manufacturing disk cams has been completely eliminated. “Tool production has become a lot easier. That has also come as a relief to our employees, who were initially very skeptical about the new Bihler servo technology after decades spent manufacturing on mechanically-operated machines. However, the entire workforce is now extremely enthusiastic about the new system and is already asking about getting another machine. As a result, the new RM-NC has also had a very positive, motivating impact on our entire team,” points out Valeria Cecchi. Fifteen or more new tools have now been manufactured for the RM-NC. In parallel, the company is also working on adapting its existing tools.

Unhesitating recommendation

And, of course, the new servo stamping and forming machine also delivers the required parts quality, especially since, at an average of 5,000 parts per hour, the system is deliberately not being run at maximum production speed. After nearly two-and-a-half years working with the new RM-NC, Cecchi’s impression of the experience is therefore very positive. Paolo Cecchi has no doubts: “We are very happy with this investment, which has really moved our manufacturing technology forwards and has put us in a great position for the future”. “With the new RM-NC, we can now manufacture even shorter runs of complex components extremely quickly and highly efficiently. It will also give us access to many new customer projects and, if I’m honest, we should have gone about acquiring it a lot earlier,” reflects a laughing Valeria Cecchi. “All in all, we can only recommend that all metalworking businesses that are still producing on mechanical Bihler stamping-and-bending machines switch over to Bihler servo technology as soon as they possibly can.”