We were invited in Medole, Mantova to the OPEN HOUSE of CMM, jewel not only of the Italian territory but Europe-wide.
CMM is leader in the laser cutting on behalf of third party and specialising in steel sheets, tubular and profilates, able to supply to the customer many important services thanks to a thirty-tree-year experience in the activity.
CMM originated to 1974 from the Ghirardi’s determination , a family strongly willing to be abreast of the times and to match the market evolution.
Synthetically this know-how has enabled the former small sized carpentry to reach the top of the field.
A very important step moved in 1989 with the introduction of the first data management punching machine followed by many others same and banding machine, up to 1994 when, because of space and logistics matters, a new hanger building was requested.
CMM started to certify in 1996 when ISO 9000 were only at the very beginning.
The idea of introducing a combined punching/laser cutting machine was due to the fact that laser technology was moving the first step without guaranteeing the actual performance. It could reveal a failure,
Otherwise the Company would have continued the activity using the punching machine entrusted to Mr. Luigi Ghirardi’s twenty-year-old sons.

So, it was quite a bet, but this choice was the beginning of a long way fully of important results.
In the 1996, forging ahead, the first laser cutting in plan was bought, at the time with a very significant 4000x2000 working surface, with the very important intention to get the lateral tube cutting and allowing CMM to understand the important potential (even if still of niche) that this technology would have carried .
In the following years it started the interest for a specific tube machine with the consequence introduction of the first tube cutter in the 1998 till to have, after two hardly years, four tube cutting systems in the new division built due to the machineries arrival.
The choice to build such a big shed for tubes division ( 5 thousand square meters) allowed CMM to have many space for lager sized machine till the arrival, in 2001, of the first big system( with a working surface of 8 meters loading/ 8 meters unloading/ 300 mm maximum workable diameter/ 15 mm thickness) making the CMM as principal referent in Italy being the first arrived in Europe.
At the same time the sheet division was upgraded by the purchasing of more specialised laser cutter in plain, bending robot and new bending machine.
The same system with a more powerful generator (4kw) arrived after 3 years, following to further important orders.
In 2005 the first very big tube laser cutter machine was ordered to the manufacturing company and after a long way (of synergy with the technical staff, in particular with Marco Ghirardi who gave important advices dictates from the learnt experience due to the great engagement in this technology during the years) it started to work with some problems but many satisfactions at the beginning of 2007.
During the OPEN HOUSE many visitors had the opportunity to see the machines in function and their remarkable potentiality as well as all the others CMM working machinery.

Nowadays CMM is present with its products and services everywhere you speak about sheet or the tube, heading at the realization of products in synergy with the customers and realizing with them the necessary planning
Normally, they are customers who don’t have high consumptions request( otherwise interested in buying the machine directly) and needs of its technology (cut and bending) but the use of big machineries, sure not for all, allow to enter in contact also with more important reality .
More oriented to supply ready materials, although many times they can be finished also, CMM takes advantage of external and selected collaborators for welding, paint job and galvanizing, on line with the will to offer products able to guaranty elevated qualitative standards.

This don’t exclude the intention to have finished product designed by the Company and characterized from cutting –edge technologies, following directly paint job and galvanizing also, ready to be send to the customers for the assembling (poster advertising).
If on one side it is necessary to follow the technological evolution, to have much space and to manage an excellent logistic, from the other one the structure, for being able to work in optimal way, must be supported from the presence of first level technicians and experts, for which the knowledge of the job is continuously supported by a constant formation.
The company philosophy goes, therefore, in twofold direction. Careful to the technological innovation, the CMM invested lot of resources in lasts years, in the tubes and sheets machinery purchasing ,because, like remarks Mr. Luigi Ghirardi “we cannot afford to miss the last generation machine”. Just in the tube, as an example, the company is able today to offer machinery able to complete the typological range, starting from the small tube up to the one of 508 diameter.
“The main problem - continues Ghirardi- is to form the employees and the staff and for this reason the company maintains a direct contact with different Technical Institutes that send us their student in order to achieve practice or for stages” confirming CMM company like an optimal opportunity for all those young people who wish to enter in the job’s world through strongly professional training course
Considering the above mentioned premises and the strategies already used for the next future it’s clear that there will be a development destined to carry far away.

A year and means ago, in fact, the union with an important Iron and Steel group of Verona, MANNI SIPRE, has still increased the activity in the tube and sheet laser cutting’s field
A new plan is going to enable further technological, logistic and managerial investments in order to widen the range of services offered to the customer.
From this standpoint, the opening towards the new emergent Asian markets confirm Ghirardi’s family certainty in future, now supported in the Company conduction by the sons, thus far successor of a long tradition that wants to continue.
“Our know-how projects us on the market, in a position to picking the possibility to have supplies materials also from the new producers of the emergent countries”.

That the CMM know to do good its trade, it’s not showed only by the numbers, the history and the business philosophy (It ‘s clear also from the heavy presence of visitors (more than 200 people) to enter in the Company during the Open House, the 1st June)
A way like another to make clear and obvious the tendency to work to tight contact with the territory. But also a way “ in order to show what we are doing, and especially how we are doing it”.
Special occasion, therefore, that one of OPEN HOUSE, to be added with several activities of advertising (for introducing the products and services quality), the organizing of trade fair, the Company web site and, not for last, the choice of specialized magazine able to speak with the same field’s operators.
www.cmmlaser.it

By M. Chiais