ITALY 02The Economic Miracle and Machine Tools

Recovery and the Marshall Plan (1945–1953)

The birth of UCIMU

On December 29, 1945, the year the war ended, the Italian machine tool makers' association UCIMU (Unione Costruttori Italiani Macchine Utensili, the Italian Machine Tool Builders' Association) was founded in Milano^[3]. The founding papers were signed by the heads of 10 companies, including Fiat, Grazioli, Maserati, Minganti and Pensotti^[1][2]. It was set up to defend the industry's interests and promote cooperation among its members, and it later became the main organizer of domestic and European trade fairs. A 1953 weekly journal of the British Board of Trade reported that UCIMU would run the following year's European Machine Tool Exhibition^[4].

The Marshall Plan and the modernization of Fiat

In 1948 the US European Recovery Program (the Marshall Plan, ERP) began. A 1991 report by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) says this aid and Italian government funds helped postwar machine tool makers get started, but adds that Italian production did not really expand across borders until the 1970s^[5]. According to the US trade journal Iron Age of June 1949, Italy had asked to put $19 million of the aid funds toward machine tool purchases through July^[6].

The largest recipient of the aid was Fiat. In May 1950 the US magazine Business Week reported that Fiat was carrying out a $45 million modernization, about $15 million of it funded by US aid and the rest by long-term loans from the Italian government. American machine tools lined the Mirafiori plant in Torino, and the assembly line for the 1400, the first new postwar model, had begun to run^[8][9]. As large factories brought in American machines and started mass production, companies making parts, jigs and tools, and companies repairing machines, grew up around them.

Innocenti's heavy machinery, and an industry still small

In Milano, Innocenti rebuilt its war-damaged Lambrate works from 1950. Its heavy machinery division made steel tube rolling mills as well as lathes, presses and heavy machinery under US licenses, and became a pillar of the company alongside the Lambretta scooter^[7]. In the province of Varese, Ficep opened its first heavy machinery plant in 1953^[10]. Even so, Rolfo, of an institute of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), considers that Italy's machine tool industry held a “modest position” in technology and production until the end of the 1950s, and that domestic demand surged and new companies came in one after another only with the boom of the 1960s^[32].

Trade fairs, and from imports to domestic machines (1954–1962)

1954: the European fair comes to Milano

The European Committee for Cooperation of the Machine Tool Industries (CECIMO) had held a “European Machine Tool Exhibition” almost every year since 1951. It went to Paris in 1951, Hannover in 1952 and Brussels in 1953, where 769 companies from 14 countries exhibited. Milano was chosen for the 4th show, held at the Milano fairgrounds on September 14–23, 1954, and run by UCIMU^[4][11]. It was the first big stage on which the Italian industry played host to European makers. The exhibition came to Milano again in 1963 and 1971, and from 1975, under the name “EMO,” it was opened to makers from outside Europe (see German Archive, Chapter 3)^[19][28].

6 machines in 10 imported

In 1955 Fiat launched the small 600, and in July 1957 the Nuova 500, and mass car ownership began in Italy^[9]. Demand for machines to cut parts in volume jumped, but it was met mainly by foreign machines. According to a report from Milano in the US magazine Control Engineering, 6 of every 10 machine tools sold in Italy in 1957 were foreign-made, with Germany the leading supplier, and the domestic share was 41%. There were about 250 machine tool makers, but only 5 or 6 could build heavy machines. The article also notes a strong feeling that in a country with plenty of labor, automation would cause unemployment, and that while the big firms had their own laboratories, small companies had nowhere to do research^[13].

1958: the first Italian Machine Tool Exhibition

To change this, UCIMU held the first Italian Machine Tool Exhibition in Milano on September 12–21, 1958. 529 companies showed 2,200 machines (6,300 t in all) on about 27,000 m², and about 70,000 people came^[15][16][13]. The British magazine Machinery reported that most of the exhibits were Italian-made, featuring Zocca's cylindrical and surface grinders, Maxnovo's hydraulic copying lathes, Mannaioni's high-speed thread-cutting lathes, Rigiva's milling machines and Federici's machine combining ultrasonic and electrical discharge machining^[15]. Maxnovo was the only company to show an NC machine^[17]. The aim was, first of all, to make Italian companies familiar with Italian-made machines^[13]. The exhibition has continued every two years without a break and became today's BI-MU. The October 2026 show is the 35th^[18].

The effect showed up in the figures at once. In the first half of 1958, domestic machine tools took 70% of the home market (41% in 1957). The industry, however, worried that lower tariffs in the European Common Market would let even more German machines in^[13].

OMO's new plant and NC research

Olivetti's machine tool division OMO struggled for some time after the war, but grew in the 1950s, pulled along by mass production of the company's new typewriters and calculators. Customers were turning from versatile general-purpose machines to special-purpose machines that cut specific parts fast. OMO built special-purpose machines combining several machining units, and transfer machines that moved parts automatically to the next station, and delivered them to Fiat, Necchi, Piaggio, Brown Boveri, Renault and others. In 1955 it began building a new plant at San Bernardo on the outskirts of Ivrea (designed by Eduardo Vittoria), and moved there at the end of 1956^[12].

In 1957 OMO began research into running machine tools by numerical control (NC) using Olivetti's electronics^[12]. The first prototype, born of cooperation with Olivetti's electronic computer laboratory, was the FAC, a milling machine for cutting cams (parts that produce a set motion as they rotate), driven by paper tape punched on an Audit 623 accounting machine. The archive describes it as “probably the first NC machine tool in Italy.” In 1959 Olivetti unveiled Italy's first electronic computer, the Elea 9003^[14].

1960: the second show and the “renaissance of machine tools”

The US magazine Control Engineering described the second Italian Machine Tool Exhibition in October 1960 as a “renaissance in Italian machine tools.” Production in 1960 was 40% higher than in 1959 (about 35,000 t), visitors numbered 42,000, deals exceeded $10 million, and the domestic share had reached 70%. Labor had become short in the north, and the mood among workers, who had strongly opposed automation in 1958, had changed^[17][16].

New controls filled the halls. Olivetti showed the NC cam milling machine it used in its own office machine plants (cutting cams up to 300 mm in radius to ±0.02 mm); San Rocco of Monza showed electronic positioning for boring machines, and Caser of Pavia a control that moved the table of a turret drilling machine by paper tape. Marposs of Bologna showed gauging heads that measured dimensions on the machine, RIV of Torino air micrometers made under license from Moore Products of the US, and Ercole Marelli of Milano contactless control units under license from Westinghouse of the US^[17]. It was a period of starting to build their own controls while bringing in American technology under license. In 1961 OMO merged with Olivetti's tool and jig works to become an in-house division^[12].

NC and the growth of exports (1963–1975)

Olivetti's NC machines and machining centers

In 1963 Olivetti launched the NC plano-milling machine FP9 CN, which succeeded in the market. It followed with the Auctor 25, an NC drilling machine that handled drilling, tapping, boring and milling on one machine^[14][12]. In the same year, 1963, the 8th European Machine Tool Exhibition was held in Milano; the number of NC machines was about half that at the 1967 Hannover show, and machines carrying positioning NC from Masing of West Germany appeared in show reports for the first time^[19].

The 1965 Auctor 25 Multiplex changed 12 tools automatically and, with 3-axis positioning NC, carried out drilling, tapping, boring and milling in sequence. The same year Olivetti also brought out the Inspector 16-6, a measuring machine for checking parts cut in the factory. The Auctor was designed by Rodolfo Bonetto (with Walter Eichenberg), and the Auctor Multiplex won Italy's industrial design award, the Compasso d'Oro, in 1967^[14]. In 1967 Olivetti unveiled the horizontal machining center Horizon at the European Machine Tool Exhibition in Hannover. It searched for and changed 31 tools automatically and could move 4 axes simultaneously. That year Olivetti stopped making conventional machine tools and concentrated on NC machines and NC units^[14][12].

Olivetti's NC was used abroad too. Of the 80 NC machines Kolb of West Germany had delivered by the end of August 1967, 2 carried Olivetti NC units, and from that year Olivetti also had a department selling its machine tools in West Germany^[19]. In March 1969 it filed a patent on a device for changing tools automatically (the priority date of US Patent 3,710,659)^[24]. For the birth and spread of the machining center, see also American Chapter 4, “The Birth of NC and the Machining Center” and Japanese Archive, Chapter 2.

Local firms start building machine tools

The boom of the 1960s drew new builders into machine tools^[32]. Mandelli, which had machined precision parts in Piacenza since 1932, became a partnership of the founder and his three sons in 1960, and in 1965 built its first machine tools (POSITIV, MEDAL, THEMA) and the first building of its present plant. It went on to build EGO, its first machine with the basic features of a machining center, and became a joint-stock company. In 1970 it brought out REGENT, a modular machine that could be combined into larger systems, and began machining difficult aircraft materials such as titanium^[22]. In 1965 Ficep started an NC line that cut and drilled structural steel for buildings exactly to the numbers on the drawing^[10]. From cutting parts to building machines: this is how the later Piacenza machine tool district came into being.

In Torino, two engineers who had left Fiat started the coordinate measuring machine maker DEA in a small building in Borgo San Paolo. The founder later recalled taking the first machine straight to Germany to present it^[33]. Sources disagree on the founding year, so we do not give it here (for the story of measuring machines, see Chapter 8).

The fastest-growing exports in the world

In the late 1960s, Italian machine tools went abroad. According to US Department of Commerce figures compiled in an Indian export survey (1969), Italy's machine tool exports grew 2.8 times, from $40 million in 1964 to $112 million in 1967, and its share of world exports rose from 3.0% to 7.3%. The report names, as major changes in world exports in this period, the decline of US exports and the rapid growth of Japanese and Italian exports^[23]. In 1971 the European Machine Tool Exhibition was held in Milano again; AEG of West Germany showed a modular NC using integrated circuits, and Boehringer a concept of adaptive control that varies the feed to suit cutting conditions^[19].

The industry in the early 1970s

A US Department of Commerce market survey (January 1975) describes the Italian industry of the early 1970s in detail. In 1972 production of metalworking machinery was $334.1 million and exports $304.1 million. There were about 180 builders, mostly family-run. They built a wide range of models to ride out business cycles and pushed exports. NC machines, large presses and machines for steelmaking and heavy industry were built by a few medium and large firms, led by Olivetti with its Auctor and Horizon and by Innocenti Santeustacchio, maker of boring mills, vertical lathes and presses^[25].

NC machine tool exports grew from $9.4 million in 1970 to $11.7 million in 1972, 75% of them NC drilling and milling machines, jig borers and automatic lathes. The biggest users of NC machines at home were the machine tool makers themselves (19%), followed by aircraft (11%). Subsidiaries of foreign companies made up only 4% of builders, among them Maxnovo of Ex-Cell-O of the US. Licensing was more common: Innocenti used American press technology and the cutting machines of Berthier of France, and Ceruti and Giustina used the technology of American companies^[25].

1973: OCN and Comau

In 1973 Olivetti's NC division became a company, OCN (Olivetti Controllo Numerico). At the San Bernardo plant it built vertical Auctor and horizontal Horizon machining centers, Inspector measuring machines and NC units, and sold them in more than 30 countries. That year's Auctor 3 and MultiAuctor 3 carried the CNC1, an NC unit with a microcomputer inside^[14]. The US Department of Commerce survey puts Olivetti's 1973 machine tool output at $24 million, exports at about 40% of that, and the workforce of the new San Bernardo plant at about 1,000^[25]. In 1972 it had also built a prototype of the Sigma assembly robot^[14].

In the same year, 1973, small Torino companies that had supplied machines to Fiat came together to form the machine tool consortium Comau (COnsorzio MAcchine Utensili)^[26]. The pattern of a large company like Fiat building its own production equipment lived on in Italy in Comau and others^[32]. UNIDO describes the Comau of around 1990 as the largest machine tool and automation company in Italy and Europe^[5]. In 1974 Fidia, a maker of NC units for milling machines, was founded^[27].

At this time UCIMU had 150 member companies accounting for 80% of the industry's output; it had its own research center near Milano and had also set up Fincimu, a finance company that funded machine tool sales and production^[25]. In 1975 Mandelli built its first FMS (a flexible manufacturing system linking machine tools with handling equipment) and set up sales and service subsidiaries in Germany and France^[22]. The same year the European Machine Tool Exhibition was held in Paris under the name “EMO.” EMO first came to Milano in 1979^[28][19]. From 1978 Italy became the world's fifth-largest machine tool producer^[5] (for what came next, see Chapter 3).

What changed in shop-floor machining

Special-purpose machines and transfer machines: On the mass-production floors of the 1950s, special-purpose machines that cut only specific parts, and fast, were in demand. OMO built machines that combined machining units to drill holes with dozens of drills at once, and transfer machines that moved parts automatically to the next station^[12]. It was a way of working that used many machines for one part, with little setup but poor at switching products.

NC and machining centers: NC machines that changed tools automatically, like the Auctor Multiplex and Horizon, could carry out drilling, tapping, boring and milling in sequence in a single setup^[14]. With fewer moves of parts from machine to machine and less work on jigs and fixturing, they became suited to cutting small batches of one product after another. The machine tool makers themselves were the biggest users of NC machines because they cut the parts of their own machines this way^[25].

Measuring on the machine: At the 1960 exhibition, devices that measured dimensions during cutting or on the machine stood out, such as Marposs's gauging heads and RIV's air micrometers^[17]. From 1965 Olivetti also built the Inspector, a measuring machine for checking parts in the factory^[14], and measurement moved out of the inspection room toward the shop floor.

Designed machine tools: Olivetti's NC machines were also new in that industrial designers decided their shape, and the Auctor Multiplex won the Compasso d'Oro in 1967^[14]. A machine form wrapped in covers, the position of the control panel: this was one of the beginnings of how machine tools look today.

⛩Links with Japan

Two countries that grew their exports at the same time

In the late 1960s, the countries whose machine tool exports grew fastest were Japan and Italy. From 1964 to 1967, Italy's share of world exports rose from 3.0% to 7.3%, and Japan's from 1.3% to 3.6%^[23]. In this period Italy was ahead of Japan in exports. In production, Japan overtook West Germany in 1969 to rank third in the world after the US and the USSR^[35], and Italy has been fifth in the world since 1978^[5] (Machine Tool History in Numbers).

In machining centers, too, the two countries set out at about the same time. In Japan, a Hitachi group company built an NC machine with an automatic tool changer (ATC) holding 8 tools in 1960, and at the 1966 Japan International Machine Tool Fair machining centers from Ikegai, Hitachi Seiki, Makino Milling Machine and others were on show^[36]. Olivetti's Auctor Multiplex (1965) and Horizon (1967) are machines of the same era (see the timeline of Chapter 2 of the Japanese archive).

Not a machine tool as such, but Calmes, the steel tube plant engineering company Innocenti set up in 1948, sold steel tube manufacturing equipment to the USSR, the US, Japan, Germany and elsewhere^[7].

What came next: Japanese–Italian machine tool ties

For the period of this chapter (1945–75), we found no record of tie-ups between Japanese and Italian machine tool makers. Later, Mandelli signed a production license agreement with Amada of Japan in 1980^[22], and Olivetti's Inspector Midi measuring machine (Compasso d'Oro 1979) was designed by Rodolfo Bonetto and the Japanese designer Naoki Matsunaga^[14]. In 1989 an Italian newspaper introduced the coordinate measuring machine maker DEA under the headline “In measuring machines, we are the Japanese,” reporting that it was taking on Mitutoyo even in small machines^[33]. In 2023 PAMA of Rovereto, a maker of large horizontal boring and milling machines, became a subsidiary of Japan's Nidec^[34].

FAQ

What is UCIMU? When was it founded?

It is the association of Italian machine tool makers (Unione Costruttori Italiani Macchine Utensili), founded in Milano in 1945. It ran the European Machine Tool Exhibition in Milano in 1954 and has held the biennial Italian Machine Tool Exhibition (today's BI-MU) since 1958. In the early 1970s it had 150 member companies accounting for 80% of the industry's output.

When was the first BI-MU?

The first Italian Machine Tool Exhibition, held by UCIMU in Milano, ran from September 12 to 21, 1958; 529 companies showed 2,200 machines and about 70,000 people visited. It has continued every two years without a break, and the October 2026 show is the 35th.

When was EMO first held in Milano?

The first show in Milano under the EMO name was in 1979. Its predecessor, the European Machine Tool Exhibition, was held in Milano in 1954 (4th), 1963 (8th) and 1971 (12th). The EMO name was first used for the 1975 show in Paris.

What was the first NC machine tool in Italy?

The Olivetti archive calls the FAC, a cam milling machine built by OMO in the late 1950s, “probably the first NC machine tool in Italy.” The first market success was the FP9 CN of 1963, and in 1965 came the Auctor 25 Multiplex, which changed 12 tools automatically. Note that Maxnovo showed NC at the first Italian Machine Tool Exhibition in 1958.