Manufacturing Executive - January/February 2009 - (Page 10) Dario Castello talks to Paul Tate DIALOGUE 01-09 LIFE IN THE FAST LANE In our latest Dialogue with a thought leader in European manufacturing, Ferrari Chief Information Officer Dario Castello reveals how technology is helping to drive the legendary Italian sports car company even faster. high-quality, high-performance manufacturing business. Q: What major strategies are driving Ferrari today? Is the business changing? A: Absolutely, business is changing and Ferrari is changing, too. We are taking a more lean approach — efficient and fastmoving with less inventory and very flexible. Over the last two years, we’ve taken some long-term strategic initiatives. We’ve invested heavily in manufacturing technologies so we can reach higher volumes and more easily expand our product lines with new models like the F430 Scuderia and the Ferrari California. We’re renewing and enhancing our physical plants and facilities extensively to make them more efficient, with new testing lines, an entirely new body shop, and advanced new assembly lines. Q: What impact do these expansion strategies have on how you use information technologies? A: Every one of these strategic projects has an IT impact and creates IT demand. But IT is not a core business of the company, so the real challenge is to be aligned with the overall Ferrari business strategy and to cope with that growing demand. We are trying to deliver tangible value that will let people take the most advantage from IT in the most efficient way. Q Will the challenges you face get more Q: complex as a result of the global financial crisis that has rocked the rest of the auto industry? A: The deepness of the crisis means nobody is safe today. Planning for the future is not that easy, even for Ferrari. It may have an increasing effect on sales and our whole ecosystem of suppliers. We rely on them, so we have to take account of the crisis and prepare. In terms of IT, this puts even more pressure on cost control. We are under greater pressure to select the right systems, to better prioritise investments and projects, and to be even more able to react to change. When you can’t plan, you have to be able to react quickly when things change. That is where IT can be a big benefit. The more agile the enterprise, the easier it is for us to react. Iconic sports car maker Ferrari is a beautiful maverick in Italy’s €59 billion Fiat Group. The Maranello-based company has pioneered the manufacture of high-quality sports cars and blisteringly fast racing cars for over 60 years and now boasts one of the world’s most valuable brands. Ferrari’s chief information officer, Dario Castello, tells Manufacturing Executive Executive Editor Paul Tate what it means to keep a global motoring legend on the fast track and how the company’s renewal strategies demand fresh approaches to both technology performance and business productivity. It has worked so far. While mainstream auto companies struggled to cope with the global meltdown last year, Ferrari bucked all industry trends. In the first nine months of 2008, Ferrari sales of 5,026 high-value vehicles pushed revenue up 21% to €1.42 billion while trading profits rose 17% to €243 million. Ferrari’s successful Formula One racing team also won the prestigious constructors title last year for the eighth time in the past 10 years. Can it last? Castello believes that IT can help maintain Ferrari’s momentum despite the downturn. Q: What are the big challenges now facing Ferrari as a high-performance sports car manufacturer? A: What’s fascinating for me about Ferrari is that it’s a low-volume, but high-complexity company. It’s really a small-to-medium-sized business, but with many operations that you would normally expect to find in a large global conglomerate. We have all the product development and manufacturing for our core business of sports cars, but we also have the F1 racing division, a financial services company, all our brand development activities and retail outlets around the world, an active e-commerce business, and even some peculiarities, like our own media company. So our technology has to support many different types of businesses, a supply chain of over 3,000 suppliers, a network of 200 dealers, and an expanding commercial presence in 52 countries. This level of business complexity makes it very different from a normal medium-sized manufacturer, in terms of IT demand and strategy. I think that is our main challenge — to choose the right technology, to adapt the right technology, and to prioritise the interventions that will help support such a complex, 10 Manufacturing Executive JAN/FEB-09
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