Societá Athesis Quality Manager Stefano Bigarelli and Production Assistant Paolo Ciapetti explain how the competition has helped transform its production operations in Verona.

The company prints a number of regional titles, but its main titles are L’Arena and Il Sole 24 Ore. Societá Athesis constructed a new plant in 2005 and printed its first jobs in 2006.

Bigarelli and Ciapetti say the INCQC helped push the newspaper to improve its processes, even at a detail level.

“The biggest progress we made in the 10 years since we have been participating is in moving our entire process toward the goal of continuous improvement. For sure, in the beginning we benefitted in the press operations the most, then eventually in our CTP area, then most recently in prepress and workflow,” says Ciapetti.

Specifically, the INCQC preparations have helped the company analyse all processes, define goals, simplify processes and material handling, motivate, train and communicate better to staff, improve and intensify partnerships with suppliers, measure test runs, delegate responsibility, and standardise operations.

The standard method to do all that involved using the “7Ms”: materials, measurements, machines and technology, maintenance, marketing, methods and men.

They went about fine-tuning all of those, especially with in-depth training of staff.

Sixty percent of the costs of participating in the competition were attributable to materials, they say, but overall costs decrease with every participation.

In the end, they say just participating in the competition is actually more important than  winning, and they will continue to participate.

“It is good for all printers, large and small. For lazy plants like ours, it helped push us to move in the right direction,” Bigarelli says.