The new relationship between Prometeia and UniCredit was presented today in Milan"Industry and supply chains 2012”, focused on the competitiveness of companies on international markets analyzed from a global supply chain perspective, which aims to improve the observation point on Italian industry.
The Report, which develops an analysis of the competitiveness of the main Italian production chains by examining their strengths and weaknesses, proposes, through the analysis of the chain, a new contribution to the debate on the future of companies and on the challenge of internationalisation.They are elaborated forecast scenarios for individual supply chains and phases of supply chains for the two-year period 2013-2014 and provided estimates for the current year.
The idea of following a supply chain perspective to examine the dynamics of the production system stems from the consideration that the Italian industrial fabric has developed in the past decades under the banner of small is beautiful, while today the prevailing view is that in order to be competitive on the markets international markets we need to grow and the supply chain approach can be a winning model of aggregation between companies. Reading industrial performance from an integrated supply chain perspective also helps to shed light on the links between the various stages of the supply chain, highlighting the strengths on which to leverage so that the overall supply chain result can become more competitive over time.
The crisis bequeathed to our country 5 points of difference in the variations between the potential foreign demand addressed to Italy and domestic demand: if in the last two years the gap between world demand addressed to our country and domestic demand was at least 8 percentage points, in the next two years one of our companies that directs its supply abroad will have a premium in terms of demand between 4-5 percentage points compared to one of its counterparts concentrated only on the domestic market. Faced with consumption and household incomes which in 2014 will be at the per capita levels of 1998 and 1986 respectively (investments in construction are stuck at 1980 levels), exports will be the only component of GDP to have recovered to previous levels of the crisis. The markets in which companies will invest (internal or external) will condition the future of all supply chains.
Greater exports, therefore, will be an obligatory path in a production system still marked by the legacy of the crisis, estimated to close 2012 with a turnover at current prices still 40 billion euro lower than that of 2008 and for this reason in search of a revival . A vocation for foreign markets similar to that of German companies would guarantee, for example, full recovery in pre-crisis industrial production levels by at least two years.
However, internationalization is a complex objective especially for smaller and less structured companies. In the absence of a shared vision, the risk is that the double, triple speed that characterizes the international cycle is also reflected today in the world of production: few champions able to keep up with a distant demand and many left behind because they are not sufficiently equipped to face the transformations in the context of global production and consumption.
As a possible alternative way forward, the Report proposes thesupply chain approach, a real strategic key for a model like the Italian one, historically made up of territories, collaboration and widespread entrepreneurship, today called to reinvent itself towards ever longer, more competitive and global markets and processes. Teaming up in productive alliances should become part of our culture to combat entrepreneurial dwarfism and individualism.
The competitiveness of the system (public and business) is described as a key variable of the scenario and broken down into a synthetic index for 13 supply chains and 5 phases. The filiere that make up the index are Food and drinks; Automotive; Paper/press/publishing; Chemical industry; Construction products; Electronics and precision instruments; Mechanical components; Appliances; Electrical engineering; Machines and plants; Wood-furniture; Metals; Fashion. THE phases that make up the index are:sourcing; first workings; intermediate processing; final productions; distribution.
Machines and plants, electrical engineering, mechanical components they are those supply chains where the competitiveness index (which takes into account the relative positions in each phase of the various supply chains from the point of view of the share on foreign markets, debt sustainability, productivity) reaches its maximum. The result is the result of a homogeneous positioning of the various phases and it is precisely on this compactness that it is possible to identify the strong point of the Italian offer. What was called a mechanical granary in the years of the economic boom has matured into a real system of excellence. In these supply chains, Italy is today placed at the top of competition in all stages of production with companies that appear to be linked to each other by virtuous collaborations, but more generally by the common thread of competitiveness.
The picture of other productions is different, where the competitive balance of the supply chain is still good, but strongly unbalanced between the different phases. In the fashion for example, the major contribution to the good positioning of the overall index depends above all on the final processes. The reflection of the long transformation process that has affected the global production balance of the supply chain has in fact been the progressive impoverishment of the more upstream stages. It is a balance that can be extended to other typical Made in Italy productions such as those offeed, But also to chemistry e metals, as well as the intermediate processing of appliances.
In the case of automotive, electronics, electrical engineering inclusion in global chains can offer the so-called subcontracting growth margins better than the general average, which overall sees an average annual growth in turnover for 8 out of 13 industrial chains of less than 1% for the two-year period 2013-'14. The strength of brands in the final products of fashion, food, furniture it can guarantee growth potential in promising markets such as China, Turkey and other emerging markets that are still not sufficiently manned. In these cases, a contribution to the competitiveness of the supply chain could also come from the more upstream phases, which today are paying above all for excessive financial fragility.
Profitability in 2014 appears to be lower for the phases at the extremes of the various supply chains, that of sourcing and that of the distribution which is also the only one to also present a forecast of negative growth in turnover in the next two years. In the case ofcaterers businesses pay for the country's lack of natural resources, but also for a cycle of payments that in Italy penalizes above all businesses further upstream of the production chains. There distribution instead, it will have to pay for a negative consumption scenario, a low international vocation and a highly fragmented supply system.
The ways for competitiveness in the Italian supply chains remain different and articulated: balancing of payment times from downstream to upstream, improvement of productivity and innovation in the industrial phases, growth of the foreign presence in distribution. Companies will not be able to play the game in front of them alone. The country system can now intervene, offering the individual supply chains a vision of the future which will also be a vision of itself and its industrial ambition in the medium term. The idea of "making a system" between complementary small and medium-sized enterprises must also make headway, join productive alliances to combat entrepreneurial dwarfism.
The problem of dimensional growth can have two types of solution: the classic merger between companies, which remains the main way to achieve higher levels of productivity and efficiency and that of "getting together" to collaborate from a supply chain perspective, i.e. creating networks between companies with close partnerships with their suppliers and customers, with a wider geographical and more heterogeneous collaboration base in terms of tasks than the cluster mainly local products.
