LOGISTIC EFFICIENCY IN CUSTOMER SERVICE

New input, or rather, a welcome return for a whole new project but benefiting from an important legacy. There exists an unprecedented parallel between Paolo Varrese, already a talent of Fontana Gruppo in the past, and Fast Trade, the new business unit of the multinational fasteners company, which benefits from all the know-how gained over fifteen years through Fontana Fasteners. In fact, since March, Varrese has come back stronger to the Group as Operations Manager for Italian and European subsidiaries with the aim of organizing and managing the new network.

«All Fast Trade subsidiaries must work together through strong central coordination that allows them to manage shipments and supplies, exploit economies of scale and optimize energy». The focal point of this project is the creation of a central warehouse in Bourogne, Alsace (France), a strategic location due to its geographical position in central Europe, which therefore makes it possible to create significant logistic efficiency in all countries of operation of Fast Trade, i.e. those within the EMEA perimeter.

«Based on a centralized model of inventory management and building a relationship of real collaboration with each other, local subsidiaries are therefore called upon to focus their attention exclusively on the customer. These include consolidated industrial customers, on whom we often have medium-long term visibility; but also, customers managed by order, who need quick responses and very short delivery times and can therefore benefit more from unique product management». Moreover, local presence is crucial in serving industrial clientele who operate in very different sectors: from shipbuilding to household appliances, from hospitals to electric motors to Tier 2 and Tier 3 (here the business areas of Fast Trade).

More than twenty years ago, then, Fontana was a pioneer of kanban; today innovation continues through the rethinking of processes and their optimization according to the changing market and its needs. Flexibility and willingness to always seize new business opportunities are, after all, the basis of Fast Trade’s philosophy. Paolo Varrese comments: «We are only at the beginning of this new journey and over 120 people involved from Italy, France, Spain, Romania and Poland are responding with great enthusiasm to demands and change. In this extremely difficult year for everyone, our staff are working on themselves in order to understand how to do even more and be better at customer service».