“The increasing complexity, a more selective market and the challenges of internationalization require us to be more and more efficient as a company. The main growth areas in a mature sector as ours impose two choices: constant technological innovation in terms of automation and process specialization to increase product quality and control of processing phases, and a constant investment in the human resources that manage such processes, to establish a culture of value and reduce the waste caused by the need of process improvement and by necessary human empowerment measures. The projects started with the Universities, act precisely on these aspects and, since targets are challenging, we wanted to give life to the MSM Academy project, which brings together these two great axes of intervention under a single hat: technology and people, together towards excellence”.
With these words, Marco Gambarini, President of Metallurgica San Marco, a Brescia-based company leader in the production and processing of brass, presented today the ambitious and innovative MSM Academy project, born with the awareness that nowadays the management of resources and their skills represents the real competitive gap of companies. In this process, very delicate because it leads to the revisiting of organizational charts and team composition, Metallurgica San Marco (MSM) has been able to make an evolutionary leap, exploring sectors that have bben so far very distant from the so-called “heavy” industry, i.e. science, and, for the first time ever in Italy, neuroscience, relying on the academic world to have assessments and solutions with a clear scientific foundation.
“For Metallurgica San Marco this is the year of the challenge,” commented Alessandro Rasetta, Soft HR Manager at Metallurgica San Marco. It is no coincidence that we have defined it, almost provocatively, as the “Year of happiness”, committing ourselves to accept the requests for continuous improvement and supporting the efforts needed to consolidate the change towards excellence already undertaken in recent years. The company will support these processes with the investments they need, while people will feed it by getting involved, seriously”.
To structure the Academy, Metallurgica San Marco has turned particularly to the University of Brescia through the RISE research laboratory and the academic spin-off IQ CONSULTING, under the supervision of Professor Marco Perona, and to Umana Analytics, a reality specialized in neuroscience applied to human resources, under the coordination of Professor Riccardo Palumbo.
“Through the Brass Manufacturing Optimization project – Professor Marco Perona explains – three different University teams have studied the production process, identifying and eliminating the critical issues from the metallurgical, technological and plant engineering point of view. With this intervention the company has succeeded in significantly increasing the quality of the product, the conformity of the process, the rigor and completeness of its Quality System. The technological improvement of the production process and the increased planning capacity have had as a logical consequence a redefinition of the internal organizational roles, carried out after a careful study of the theoretical knowledge, pragmatic skills, attitudes and motivations of the 20 top management of the company, including the entrepreneurs. This has led to a review of the company organization chart, to highlight the uncovered positions and to provide indications on how to best cover them. Finally – adds Perona – the entry into the company of some new profiles, the opening of new roles, the introduction of innovative working methods and more rigorous management techniques have paved the way for an organic, structured and sustainable investment over time in training and qualification of personnel at all levels and in all company areas, both in terms of knowledge and pragmatic skills (know-how) and, finally, attitudes (knowing how to be)”.
The new program that the company is launching in these days is a real “corporate academy” which will be entrusted with setting up and delivering the training programs, organized by IQ and primary local entities and MSM partners (like Saef), which will cover topics such as Team Managemenet, Managerial Juggling, Emotional Intelligence, Stress Management, Public Speaking. This intervention will be accompanied by an incentive program for company personnel oriented to results, according to the well-known practice of “Management by Objectives” (MBO), and to a review of the long-term strategy developed by the company.
Pioneering at a national level, Metallurgica San Marco has also added to the already started process, the “Trust Project”, introducing neuroscience into the company. Through two instruments used in the biomedical field and targeted interviews performed by a dedicated staff of Umana Analytics, a spin-off of the University of Chieti, it was in fact possible to identify the networks of relationships and the relationships of trust between the transversal functions, for setting up a course of intervention, including training, aimed at creating a group of high-performance managers, managers and executives. In particular, on the instrument front, the “electronic nose” was used, which records the emitted metabolites of our body, which vary according to different sensory stimuli and contextual situations, that allow to detect the physiological response and the emotional openness or closure that the people interviewed have towards each other; and the “neurobiofeedback”, which captures the physiological signals related to stress, and determines and highlights, by completing it, the picture described above.
“The goal of every organization – explains Professor Riccardo Palumbo – is to make profit by creating value for its customers, both external and internal, that is, the people who work within the company: success is determined by a series of critical decisions about quality and product design and processes that involve all these parties. The advances of neurobiological and economic-behavioral research allow for a deep understanding of human behavior and represent new and more objective resources for value creation in organizations. The “trust project” concerns one of the most important assets of corporate capital: the relationship between people and the quality of existing relationships in the company “.
Going through the objective of enhancing and improving people and giving them recognition, expressed through the MSM Academy, Metallurgica has taken a further step, giving life to the “MSM Talent” project, which envisages both the activation of the School-Work Alternation program, and the provision of scholarships for the children of employees who distinguish themselves for academic merit. The scholarships, which will cover the costs of textbooks and university enrollments for the most deserving students, will be assigned by a special commission that will reward the talents of tomorrow.
“Relying on the best talents in the field and the vision of identifying them in the new generations, with a view to training and investment, has led us to partnerships and activities that enhance the new resources – concludes Marco Gambarini. A commitment that I have personally assumed, aware that acting for and with the territory and focusing on young people and their future are key criteria for growth and success “.
