Interview with Giorgio Testa

After a long career in electronics, Giorgio Testa decided to seize a new challenge and, in 2016, joined Spin-ON, a particularly innovative Enterprise network.
We interviewed him to get to know his professional history.

 

INTERVIEW WITH GIORGIO TESTA

How did you get to know NTS?

I have been Marco Manzoni’s tutor when he was going to graduate in Engineering at Bergamo University with professor Lucio Cassia.
We kept in touch during the following years, exchanging ideas, opinions and aims.
We greeted each other via Skype one day and decided to have a coffee together. I’d say it has been a providential coffee.

 

Why? What happened then?

Talking to him I realized that our professional experiences were really aligned: we both thought that the industrial system needed synergic visions and activities.
Marco told me about his wish: he longed to become a solution provider to his customers, able to design and realize integrated solutions joining plastic and electronical skills. He thought that the integrated approach was winning and forward-looking.
I totally agreed with his thought and found in his ideas and in his words the same conclusions I reached after studying the trend of the market, that was starting to ask – with more and more insistency – the gathering and integration of different skills.
The necessity to raise the level of the service to offer to the customers was clearly emerging.
After that, it’s been a short step: in 2016 my adventure with Spin-ON began.

 

What is it about?

Founded in 2013, Spin-ON is an enterprise network which joins the skills of the plastic world of NTS to the ones of FAE Technology, a leading company in design and construction of electronic systems.
The common goal is to develop a new integrated business through the synergy of the respective skills and to grant complete and technological services and products to each one’s reference market.

 

What do customers that meet Spin-ON’s opportunity appreciate the most?

First of all customers appreciate having only one interlocutor that understand immediately their requirement: this converts into a more efficient dialogue and a more performing result. The customer that chooses us knows that he can reach an excellent solution from all points of view.
We are not a standard supplier, we are a business partner that supports the customer from the beginning to the end of the life cycle of his products.

 

What happens during the first meeting with your customer?

I listen to him carefully to understand what he requires.
After analyzing his needs, I consult my team. After a few days I meet my customer and bring a prototype with me: my promptness is generally highly appreciated.

 

How do you manage to be so fast?

We treat the problem as an opportunity.
We tried to shorten the processes thanks to this new strategic approach, the experience and the know-how gained during the last years inside innovative platforms defined “Product Acceletator” both in FAE and NTS.
It deals with some basic models of electronic platforms that cover about the 95% of the enquiries we receive.
They allow us to meet the customer and collect with him the preliminary idea of the product, with the ability to realize it quickly, always giving the highest care to his specific requirements.
Having an active model to start from has a lot of advantages: we are far more quicker in realizing a complete product, more competitive as it concerns prices and it allow us to offer a taylor made solution to our customer.
The customer that relies upon us can also count on a shorter time to market compared to his competitors, which means, to him, an exclusive advantage with a high added value.

 

What if the customer’s idea does not fit one of your standard models?

The challenge leads our different Business Units to meet and give life to a great and fruitful intellectual ping-pong. Spin-ON is where the world of plastics by NTS and the world of electronics by FAE are accustomed to dialog with each other, in a fluid and dynamic way with the aim to create solutions aligned to our customers’ requests.
It is this attitude indeed to make us fast and effective, even when we have to design something staring from a blank page.

 

Is there a project of whom you are particularly proud?

There are many of them.
One in particular deals with an innovative system for domestic control, a kind of virtual butler
(Jarvis: http://www.hellojarvis.it).
The company IOOOTA from Bologna consulted Spin-ON as they needed to make a product evolution: we quickly activated and, in less than four months, we reached the goal.
The skills of NTS led this project to be shown at  SuperDesign Show di Milano (FuoriSalone) and at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
I think this is a beautiful example of a Made in Italy technology.
You transmit your enthusiasm while speaking. Is there a secret channel you activate when you need energy?

I am infinitely grateful to my job because, every day, I have the chance to be involved into new challenges and projects. This intellectual mobility generates excitement, positivity and vitality. Moreover I can also exchange views with valuable colleagues: we setup a network of innovative ideas that empower each other and we surprise to realize them. We have fun working together.
I believe our minds are like drawers where everyone of us puts his/her ideas and know-how. Let’s always keep them open so that everyone will feel free to take what they need and make a good use of it.
Sharing and professional contamination are the key words of the future. I am sure about it.