ITALY 03FMS, CNC and the Rise to Export Power

FMS and robots, and the birth of specialist makers (1973–1989)

Comau, born beside Fiat

At the center of Italian automation was the carmaker Fiat. In 1973, small Torino companies that supplied machines to the Fiat group joined together, and Comau was formed as a machine tool consortium (Consorzio Macchine Utensili)^[1]. Car plants cannot do without transfer lines for machining engine parts (lines of dedicated machines in a row, with parts passed automatically to the next machine) and equipment for welding car bodies. The parent company's plants served directly as a testing ground.

In 1978 Fiat made Robogate, an 18-minute documentary film^[11]. Robogate was the name of a system for welding and assembling car bodies with robots, and Mitsuhiro Hirata (1988, Hitotsubashi Journal) names Robogate for car bodies and LAM, the automated engine line, as the pillars of Fiat's automation^[12]. Comau's company history describes 1984–1993 as the period of “the first FMS, high-speed machining and the first laser robot,” and also counts the later “Open Robogate” among its products^[1]. At the end of the 1980s, in a US trade journal's table of leading companies, Comau had machine tool sales of $380 million and 3,500 employees, and a report by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) calls it the largest machine tool company in Italy and in Europe. It also did control work through a joint venture with Digital Equipment of the US^[2].

Mandelli of Piacenza and the FMS

Around the same time, in Piacenza, southeast of Milano, Mandelli, which had started in 1932 as a precision machining shop, had become a machine tool maker. It built its first machine tool in 1965 and became a joint-stock company with EGO, a machine with the basic features of a machining center. According to its company history, in 1975 it built its first FMS and set up sales and service companies in Germany and France^[5].

An FMS (Flexible Manufacturing System) brings together several machining centers, carts that carry pallets loaded with parts, racks where the pallets wait their turn, tool management, and a computer that directs it all. A transfer line is good at running one part in large volumes, but has to be rebuilt when the product changes. With an FMS, a different part can be loaded on each pallet and cut on the same machines just by switching programs. The worldwide list of FMSs compiled by the US National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in 1986 shows Mandelli FMSs at Alsthom in France (electric motor parts), Caterpillar (construction machinery), Steyr in Austria, IBM and Nuovo Pignone (turbines) in Italy, and Rockwell (truck differentials)^[13].

The largest was an FMS for engine parts delivered in 1984 to Ferrari in Maranello. With nine machining centers and two washing machines, it machined 29 different parts in the quantities needed for 13 engines a day, and it was controlled by “Plasma,” the in-house NC that Mandelli had launched in 1980^[13][5]. In 1985 Mandelli put an FMS in its own plant too, with five machining centers, a coordinate measuring machine, a 20-pallet rack and 120 tools, and it machined machine tool parts unmanned for one of its three shifts^[13].

What changed on the shop floor. In an FMS plant, setup became something done “off the machine” rather than “on the machine.” Operators fix parts onto pallets and put them on the rack, and the machine takes in each pallet when its turn comes and cuts it. Tools are shared in a large magazine and swapped for spares when they wear out, and after cutting, dimensions are checked with a measuring machine or a probe (a sensor that measures position by touch). Unmanned night running became possible only once this “external setup” and “automatic management of tools and dimensions” were in place. Much of the way pallet-changer machining centers are used today comes from the FMSs of this era (for today's MCs, see the Machining center page).

The NBS list includes about 25 Italian FMSs, the fourth most after the US, Japan and West Germany. Besides Mandelli and Comau, the suppliers included Berardi, a maker of large machines (for Nuova Innocenti in Milano, Piaggio Gilera in Genova and others), the computer maker Olivetti (an FMS of 10 machining centers for Maserati in Modena), and Jobs^[13]. Comau supplied FMSs not only to Fiat plants (wheel hubs, universal joints, tractor gearbox cases) but also to the East German truck maker VEB Robur and to DAF in Belgium^[13].

Automating sheet metal: Salvagnini's panel bender

It was not only cutting machines. Salvagnini, which started in Milano in 1963 as a maker of lubrication equipment, moved to Sarego in the province of Vicenza in 1974, and in 1977 its founder Guido Salvagnini came up with the panel bender P4 and built it^[6]. On a press brake (a machine that bends a sheet by clamping it between upper and lower dies), a worker has to reposition the sheet for every bend. A panel bender holds the sheet down on a table and bends its four edges in turn while the machine rotates it, so box shapes such as refrigerator panels and control cabinet doors can be made one after another without human hands. The next year, 1978, it launched the punch-shear S4, which punches and shears in one machine, and linked the S4 and P4 into a line that runs automatically from flat sheet to bent part^[6]. In 1985 it built for General Electric a sheet metal plant that combined many of these lines and ran unmanned even at night. Even restarting after a power failure was automatic; the plant was used for 27 years and retired in 2012^[6].

New specialist makers: Fidia, Prima, Jobs and MCM

In the late 1970s, one company after another was born in Italy focusing on a single area of automation. In Torino, Fidia, founded in 1974, designed and built NC controls for milling machines. Its strength was control for cutting free-form surfaces such as dies, molds and aircraft parts, and by 1984 it had sales companies in Germany and the US^[3]. In 1977 Prima Industrie was born in Collegno near Torino and specialized in machines that use lasers. Its name comes from “progress in manufacturing automation” (PRogress In MAnufacturing)^[7].

In Piacenza in 1978, Jobs was born as a maker of industrial automation machines. It brought out a robot for moving heavy loads in 1979, the Jomach 16 traveling-column 5-axis milling machine with an 18,000 rpm spindle in 1981, and the Jomach 25 moving-gantry high-speed 5-axis machine in 1982. These machines were for cutting car design models and aircraft parts^[9]. Also born in 1978, MCM (Machining Centers Manufacturing) brought out its first horizontal machining center in 1979 and delivered its first FMS to a British brake maker in 1985^[10]. Robots, NC, lasers, sheet metal, high-speed 5-axis: each company focused on one technology and sold to large plants abroad in that field.

Overtaking the US: the numbers of the 1980s

According to a UNIDO report, Italy was the world's fifth-largest machine tool producer from 1978. The report says that machine tool makers born with the postwar Marshall Plan and government help began selling beyond Italy's borders in the 1970s^[2]. Production fell in the recession of the early 1980s, but in 1988 it reached $2,639 million, surpassing the US figure of $2,519 million. That was about 7.5% of the world total, and in NC machine tool production Italy was second in Europe^[2]. As in Japan, UNIDO sees the demand from small and medium-sized shops for flexible NC machines as what drove the growth of NC machine production in Italy^[2].

The builders, too, were mostly small companies. In a UCIMU survey of 300 of its 450 companies, 72% had fewer than 50 employees, and companies with fewer than 200 accounted for 65% of employment, 64% of production and 57.6% of exports. The average German machine tool maker was five times the size of the average Italian one. And 71% of the industry was concentrated in Lombardia (the region of Milano) and Piemonte (the region of Torino)^[2].

Crisis, restructuring and specialization (1990–2008)

The 1993 crisis and Mandelli

Mandelli, which had led the way in FMS, listed its shares in December 1989 and set up a joint venture, Spring, with IBM Italia^[5]. But in the worldwide recession of the early 1990s machine tool orders collapsed, and in 1993 the company ran into difficulties and entered a court-supervised administration procedure. In March 1994 the group's companies, including FMS-Pama of Rovereto (PAMA, the boring mill maker) and Innse Macchine Utensili of Brescia, were placed under state extraordinary administration^[15][16]. In 1994–95 a group of Italian entrepreneurs took it over, and it got back on its feet by showing new machines at the international EMO show held in Milano in May 1995^[5]. Because each order for a large system is big, the blow is all the bigger when orders stop in a recession.

Faster, on 5 axes, and bigger

In the 1990s and 2000s, Italian makers sharpened their skills at “cutting fast,” “cutting on 5 axes” and “cutting big things.” In the early 1990s the NC maker Fidia began building high-speed milling machines (HSM) carrying its own controls, later offering a range from small machines up to large gantry types^[3]. A high-speed milling machine cuts with a fast-spinning spindle, shallow depths of cut and fast feeds. It made it possible to machine hardened dies and molds directly with slender tools to a surface close to the finished one, before EDM or hand finishing. The control is tested on its ability to look ahead through many short straight-line commands and join them smoothly, and that gave NC makers a reason to build the machines too (for CAM and how the tool moves, see the CAD/CAM page).

In 1990 Jobs brought out the Jomach 245, with a 37 kW spindle and automatic head changing, and in 2000 the LinX Compact, whose axes are driven by linear motors. Instead of ball screws, magnetic force moves the table and spindle head directly, so even large parts can be fed fast^[9]. In 2000 Mandelli began developing SPARK, a horizontal 5-axis machining center, and in 2008 it won an order for a line of large 5-axis machines to cut 6 m long titanium parts for the Boeing 787^[5]. In 1995 MCM delivered an FMS of four 5-axis cells to Dassault Aviation in France^[10]. Aircraft structural parts are made by cutting most of the material away from a solid block, leaving thin walls and ribs, so 5-axis machines that can remove large volumes fast were in demand (for the ideas behind 5-axis machining, see the 5-axis machining page).

In sheet metal too, Salvagnini delivered its first OPS, software that plans a plant's production and assigns work to the machines, in 1993, and in 2007–08 brought out a sheet metal laser cutting machine using a fiber laser as its heat source^[6]. A fiber laser amplifies light inside a thin glass fiber, making it a heat source that is more compact than a CO2 laser and more efficient at turning electricity into light.

Listings, joint ventures and then groups

From the late 1990s, the shape of the companies changed too. Fidia set up a joint venture in Beijing with Chinese aviation research institutes and others in 1993, and in 2005 a 51%-owned joint venture with Shenyang Machine Tool, China's largest machine tool maker, and began making NC controls and high-speed milling machines in China^[3]. Prima Industrie listed on the Milano stock market in 1999^[18], and in 2008 it combined with Finn-Power of Finland, a punching and bending specialist, to offer sheet metal machines from cutting (laser and punching) through to bending. This was the beginning of today's Prima Power^[7].

Among large machines, Innse (1887) and Berardi (1926) of Milano had combined to form Innse-Berardi, which joined the Camozzi group of Brescia in 1999^[17]. In 2003 Camozzi also bought Ingersoll Machine Tools of Rockford in the US, a maker of large 5-axis machines. The plant has stayed in the US^[22] (for the story from the American side, see American Chapter 5, “The Import Wave and Revival”).

In 2007 the Italian machine tool industry produced €5.33 billion and employed 28,560 people, and it exported 55.7% of its output. On the 2007–2011 average, Italy was the world's fourth-largest producer (6.5% of the world) and third-largest exporter (9.2%). The average company had about 200 employees, and companies were concentrated in Lombardia and Emilia-Romagna^[23].

Consolidation, 4.0 and foreign capital (2009–)

The 2009 slump, and living by exports

In 2009, in the global recession, Italy's machine tool production fell 29.6% from the previous year to €3.77 billion. Most of the drop came from domestic orders, with domestic deliveries down 25.2%. Meanwhile the export share rose, and in 2011 exports were 72.2% of production^[23]. The pattern became clear: even when the home economy is weak, companies that can sell abroad survive.

In this period small and medium-sized makers gathered into groups. In 2009 Jobs took over Sachman, a milling machine maker in Reggio Emilia, and in 2012 acquired a majority of Sigma, a maker of vertical machining centers, forming FFG EUROPE, a holding company bringing together Jobs, Sachman, Rambaudi and Sigma. Sales of machines from Taiwan's FFG group also began at the Jobs plant in Piacenza^[9].

Industria 4.0: buy machines, pay less tax

On December 11, 2016, the 2017 state budget law (Law No. 232) was enacted. Article 1, paragraph 9 provides that, to promote technological and digital transformation along the lines of “Industria 4.0,” new machines listed in Annex A of the law can be depreciated with their acquisition cost increased by 150%^[24]. Because a company could deduct 2.5 times the cost from its profits as an expense, this was called hyper-depreciation (iper-ammortamento, 250%). Ordinary new machines got 140% super-depreciation (super-ammortamento), while networked CNC machines and robots qualified for the more generous 250%^[25]. The aim was to get companies to replace old machines with new ones connected to robots and automation^[25]. For small job shops too, it created a strong reason to replace old manual machines with new CNC machines.

The effect showed in orders at once. On UCIMU's order index, domestic machine tool orders in 2017 rose 45.9% over the previous year, and 86.2% in October–December. The president of UCIMU said the effect of super- and hyper-depreciation was clear^[26]. According to the Ministry of Economic Development, in tax year 2017 about 15,000 companies used hyper-depreciation to invest about €10 billion in machinery and other assets^[27]. In an Istat survey too, 53% of manufacturing companies answered that hyper-depreciation had played a large or some role in their decision to invest in digital technologies^[25]. The incentives continued as “Impresa 4.0” under the 2018 budget law (with super-depreciation cut to 130%)^[26], and a plan to switch to tax credits from 2020 was put forward^[27]. Production of machine tools, robots and automation grew to €6.775 billion in 2018^[28].

What it means on the shop floor. The sudden increase in “connected machines” under this scheme also matters to the job shops that buy Italian machines. Systems that send machine status and operating data outside the machine began to come as standard equipment. Industry 4.0 and the machine communication standard umati, which began in Germany around the same time, are covered in German Chapter 4, “NC, Mechatronics and Industry 4.0”.

Restoring famous names, and foreign capital

In the 2020s, famous names changed hands one after another. Fidia's sales fell with the slump in the auto and aviation industries and COVID-19, and in November 2020 it filed for a restructuring procedure (concordato preventivo, a court-supervised arrangement with creditors). In 2022 its plan was approved with funding from a new investor, and it completed the procedure in December 2024^[4]. In 2021 Mandelli joined the Allied International group^[5]. In 2022 the investment company Femto Technologies was reported to have acquired a majority of the voting rights in Prima Industrie, with the aim of delisting it^[18], and in 2026 the group unified its name as Prima Power. It is a company of about 1,700 people with sales of about €500 million^[8]. In 2024 the US investment firm One Equity Partners took a majority of Comau, while Stellantis, heir to Fiat, remained a minority shareholder^[36][37].

Japanese companies came in too. In February 2023 Nidec acquired all the shares of PAMA of Rovereto and its affiliates. PAMA, founded in 1926, makes boring mills (large horizontal machines whose spindle extends forward and back to bore deep holes and that also mill faces) and has about 430 employees^[31][32] (see “Links with Japan” below).

Italy today: 5th in production, 4th in exports

In Gardner's world survey (for 2024), Italy's machine tool production was $6.6 billion, fifth in the world after China, Germany, Japan and the US; its exports were $4.5 billion, fourth after China, Germany and Japan; and its consumption was fifth^[34]. According to UCIMU's preliminary figures, in 2024 domestic consumption fell 34.8% and production 11.4%, but exports reached a record €4.49 billion, and 66.6% of production was exported^[33]. A backlash after the big wave of hyper-depreciation can also be seen.

The shape of the industrial districts has changed in some ways since the 1980s. According to the Italian Trade Agency (ICE), of 2025 production of €6.327 billion, Lombardia accounted for 46.6%, the northeast including Veneto (Triveneto) for 20.5%, Emilia-Romagna for 17% and Piemonte for 13.6%. Of the companies, 67% are SMEs, many of them family-run, while the remaining 33%, the large companies, account for 78% of production and 84% of exports^[38]. Compared with the late 1980s, when “71% was in Lombardia and Piemonte,”^[2] Veneto and Emilia-Romagna have gained weight. Salvagnini in Sarego, Breton in Castello di Godego (which began with stone-working machines and has about 1,000 people after 60 years), and Jobs, MCM and Mandelli in Piacenza are representative of these districts in the northeast and north-central Italy^[6][30].

⛩Links with Japan

Two countries of “small firms and NC”

UNIDO's 1991 report discusses Italy and Japan side by side. Its view is that in both countries the demand from small and medium-sized shops for flexible NC machines drove the growth of NC machine production, and that a large, flexible network of subcontractors goes hand in hand with a high uptake of NC machine tools^[2]. The scale was very different, though: in 1989 Japan produced $9,817 million, 23.3% of the world, and Italy $3,067 million, 7.3%^[2]. Japan's machine tool production became the world's largest in 1982 and stayed at the top until 2008 (Machine Tool History in Numbers). The spread of FMS and machining centers in Japan can be followed in the timeline of Japanese Archive, Chapter 2, “The Lineage of Milling Machines and MCs”.

Amada, Mandelli and Piacenza

According to Mandelli's company history, it signed a production license agreement with Japan's Amada in 1980. The history does not say what it covered^[5]. The following year, 1981, Amada set up the sales company AMADA Italia in Milano; in 1987 it formed the joint venture AMADA Schiavi with Schiavi Macchine Industriali, a press brake maker in Piacenza, and in 2004 bought it out. Today AMADA Italia has its headquarters and a technical center of more than 15,000 m² in the province of Piacenza^[14]. In sheet metal machines it competes in the same market as Salvagnini and Prima Power.

Nidec and PAMA

In November 2022 Nidec signed an agreement to buy the shares of PAMA and nine affiliates, and on February 1, 2023 it acquired all the shares. Nidec had brought Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' machine tool company (today's Nidec Machine Tool) into its group in 2021 and OKK (today's Nidec OKK) in 2022, and it explains that the aim is to strengthen its range of large, multitasking and 5-axis machines and its sales in Europe, the US and China^[31][32]. UCIMU's director general also attended PAMA's 100th anniversary event in July 2026^[39].

Comparing today's position with Japan

In Gardner's 2024 survey, Japan's production was $7.9 billion (3rd) and Italy's $6.6 billion (5th); exports were $5.7 billion for Japan (3rd) and $4.5 billion for Italy (4th)^[34]. Domestic consumption in Italy ($3.4 billion, 5th) exceeded that in Japan ($2.9 billion, 6th)^[34]. Japanese companies also exhibited at BI-MU, the Milano trade show, in 2024^[35].

FAQ

Where does Italy rank in the world in machine tool production?

In Gardner's world survey (for 2024), Italy ranks 5th in production at $6.6 billion, after China, Germany, Japan and the US, and 4th in exports at $4.5 billion. According to a report by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), it has been the 5th-largest producer since 1978, and in 1988 it overtook the US in production. Its hallmark is that it exports 60–70% of its output.

What is Industria 4.0 hyper-depreciation?

It is an incentive for investment in machinery that began with the 2017 state budget law (Law No. 232 of December 11, 2016). When a company bought new machines that connect with factory systems (those listed in Annex A of the law), it could depreciate 250% of the cost, the acquisition cost plus a 150% uplift, which lowered its taxes. Domestic machine tool orders in 2017 rose 45.9% over the previous year.

Since when have FMSs been built in Italy?

Mandelli of Piacenza writes in its company history that it built its first FMS in 1975. In a 1986 survey by the US National Bureau of Standards, Mandelli, Comau, Berardi, Olivetti, Jobs and others had delivered FMSs to Ferrari, Fiat, Maserati and plants abroad, and Italy had the fourth-largest number after the US, Japan and West Germany.

Are there links between Japanese companies and Italian machine tool makers?

Yes. Mandelli signed a production license agreement with Amada in 1980, and Amada set up AMADA Italia in 1981 and later bought out its joint venture with Schiavi of Piacenza. In 2023 Nidec acquired all the shares of PAMA (Rovereto, founded 1926), a maker of boring mills.