Looking to the Future, but with Roots in the Territory

Emanuele Bufano, Giovanni Calderoni and Riccardo Castrovilli are the creators of Ditro, a company based in Bari operating in the field of industrial automation. This concern is both young and experienced, with a very keen eye for quality and customer requirements. The company has recently become part of Confindustria Bari/BAT, expressing the desire to strengthen its presence on the local territory and at the same time to expand to an international market. 2019 also marked the foundation of Designia, a company created with the cooperation of Stefano Signorile, operating, with innovative approaches, in the field of mechanical design and construction.

Ditro – Soluzioni per l’Automazione was established in July 2008 in Modugno, near Bari, by the union of young creative minds with the aim of emerging in the field of industrial automation through consulting products related to electrical and software design, and the creation of electrical panels and on-board machine development. Building on the technical performances acquired in 10 years of experience in the industry, partners Emanuele Bufano, Giovanni Calderoni and Riccardo Castrovilli, decided to establish the company around three fundamental characteristics: proposing advanced technological solutions with the aim of satisfying the customer’s needs; implementing a growth plan combining an increase in turnover and expansion of the company’s staff and the equipment available; guaranteeing continuous growth of personnel, constantly involved in refresher and training courses.
Based on these premises, the company establishes the first contacts with customers in order to support them in the development of automatic stations and lines, from design to testing with the end customer and commissioning.

This operating method allows the company, on one hand, to build customer loyalty and, on the other, to project itself towards a vision of an increased quality level. In 2009 Ditro certified its QMS (Quality Management System) in accordance with UNI EN ISO 9001:2008, thus becoming a certified supplier to the most important local manufacturing concerns. The company creates a path of continuous improvement oriented towards learning the different technologies adopted by the various customers, in order to integrate systems useful for quality control, product traceability, optimization of machine cycles, becoming a reference point for some important multinationals.

The industrial automation sector has changed considerably, although supported by technologies which are currently less complicated and therefore accessible, the challenge to be faced involves the implementation of greater skills with complex standards and results to be achieved. “The amount of work – Giovanni Calderoni said – underwent an increase dictated by the greater comfort required by the market. In this regard, I believe that just as the industrial automation sector has changed considerably, so has our profession. Thanks to our partnerships with German industries, we have been able to introduce some peculiar novelties into our design, from which our software specialization derives, enriched thanks to the possibility of working for different companies, each of which has its own platform; therefore, it goes without saying that we are constantly starting over and are able to adapt to every need and logic”.

A young but expert project

Without ever losing sight of its corporate culture, that is, looking to the future and focusing on the territory, Ditro has chosen to invest in research and continuous updating of its staff (both commercial and technical), through participation in various professional training initiatives with technical institutes through company internships and curricular training sessions and some research and development projects focused on the company’s skills. “If it is true that automation tends to decrease the presence of the human hand in the production process,” Emanuele Bufano stated, “it is even more true that the job world itself is in continuous evolution. For this reason, from the progress standpoint, it is correct to immediately think of resolving actions, such as profitable and structured partnerships between universities, schools and companies”.

Thanks to this propensity for continuous improvement, the company has evolved over the years with the integration of increasingly complex mechanical systems, to support the electrical and software part, up to the realization, from 2014, of automatic stations in partnership with local concerns operating in the mechanical sector, obtaining excellent results. In 2019 a project, created in partnership with Stefano Signorile, in order to increase stability and performances, led the three partners to establish Designia, an innovative company operating in the mechanical design and construction sector, taking advantage of Signorile’s thirty years of experience and his highly specialized and constantly updated team. This experience is visible to customers right from the initial phase, from the feasibility studies of the process to the design and implementation of the systems and machines, right up to final testing. “Change has been a constant feature that has accompanied me throughout my working life,” Stefano Signorile, General Manager of Designia, explained, “and I have always associated change with the desire to set myself new and stimulating goals. In this umpteenth challenge, the desire has been to undertake an experience substantially different from the previous ones, being able to have by my side the professional profiles with whom I have shared the last decade of work and my professional growth. I would also add, no less important, the role of the different working partnerships I had in the past between my previous company and that of my current partners, which proved to be successful for both companies and especially for our clients”.
The close cooperation between the two companies and the strong willingness of the partners to train their staff professionally give rise to a young and experienced team of 21 resources, carefully selected to complete their skills, drawing from the best schools and universities in the area, with a deliberately large female component in design and project management. Currently the company structure is divided into operating divisions such as mechanical, fluid and electrical design, software and robot programming, with the aim of creating high performance solutions to be proposed on the market, focusing on the creativity and dynamism of the entire staff.

Always looking to the future

In 2020 Ditro joined Confindustria Bari/BAT section, Federmeccanica sector. Thanks to its membership in the Confindustria System and to the union of the main entrepreneurial realities present on the territory, Ditro, on one hand, shows the desire to strengthen its presence on the local territory and, on the other, belongs to a recognized network to increase professional partnerships even with engineering companies located beyond national borders, in order to expand its client portfolio on an international scale. “We work every day to acquire more and more orders with the strategic objective of being able to plan activities and company administration with an increasingly wide margin of time – Riccardo Castrovilli explained – In order to achieve this objective, I pay constant attention to competent personnel who I believe must be suitable and able to support their managers, with a leaning towards company flexibility and with a broad vision aimed not only at the automotive sector, part of the market in which we specialise, but also to be ready to focus on the objectives where the market is most flourishing”.