“What companies need today is to create a structured approach, a New Deal of 4.0 skills as we called it, which connects universities, research centers, startups, large multinationals, small companies, making them collaborate together and creating structures that lead from teaching to the factory “. Marco Hannappel, president and CEO of Philip Morris Italia, participating, via video link from the company’s production site in Crespellano in the province of Bologna, to a panel on skills and digital at ‘Digithon 2021‘the largest Italian digital marathon, online from today to Sunday.
According to Hannappel, “without a doubt industry 4.0, which will go even further with 5G, has skills that are platform and others that are specific”. “A platform means having with regard to any type of industry knowledge of the functioning of what is called intelligent manufacturing, the creation of instruments that connect the machines, create clouds to which the machines can be connected. Platform skills in addition to those of the digital world and digital industrialization “, he added.
“In a research we carried out with Ambrosetti – the manager continued – it emerges that almost all the companies that responded to the interview consider those of intelligent manufacturing as the key success factor. This platform of competences today are not completely available but patchy in some areas and therefore in some industrial districts and therefore are sector skills. Instead, they must be structural and connected to each other. “And then the investments of the companies are needed.” There are also the specific skills, which each industry has, and I believe – he explained – that should be sought in the investments of companies in their structures of continuous training that can allow to develop a constant innovation of knowledge on a personal level “.
But our country, according to Philip Morris Italy’s number one, has several strengths. “I believe – he explained – that there is a lot to do in our country with very solid foundations in manufacturing. We are the second largest manufacturer in Europe and we are an example. The Crespellano plant was inaugurated in 2016, as well as a billion investment, and of the 650 companies that helped build this site 600 are Italian, because when you build new generation plants and machinery, it is possible to do it in co-design, multinationals with small and medium-sized enterprises. Skills are not to be sought only in a specific person but in an integrated supply chain which brings together the areas of expertise and leads to the growth of an entire generation of companies, personnel and technologies that are then developed in our country “, he continued.
Training is central, Hannappel reiterated. “There is a need – he said – to have an engineer with a wider spectrum. This level of training must then be conveyed to a more specific level of training, because the machines are not all the same. This training we at Philip Morris we interpret with the type of investment that I believe many companies will make, creating their own training center, not an island in the sea but well connected to the mainland with many bridges. For us it will be a private institute of Philip Morris, not just physical, that we are creating the Alma Mater of Bologna here in Bologna, which collaborates in teaching with many external partners such as the polytechnics of Turin and Bari “, underlined the manager.
So, ultimately, for the manager, in our country the need is to “work on a training process that is a little different than in the past, perhaps a little more German. By creating centers of knowledge that start with ITS you can really work. We have projects with the Emilia Romagna Region to carry out operations for the growth of ITS teachers too. “For Hannappel,” our way of working in the supply chain is to be done in the Italian way, not only in the sale of products but also in training , to copy from the Germans there is the attention to the technical school on which we can improve a lot “.