For years, this company has participated in iconic projects in Mexico, such as the recent Monterrey Rayados stadium, the Soumaya Museum and the two airports in the State of Mexico, both the Texcoco airport that was never built and the recently inaugurated Felipe Angeles airport. But its customer portfolio is not limited to steel structures for construction, but diversifies to many different fronts where carbon steel or hot-rolled steel is used. In fact, it is considered one of the largest producers –if not the largest– of automated systems for the fabrication of structural steel and a leading player in the manufacture of equipment for the forging industry in the world.
Ficep Corporation is indeed one of the flagship companies in steel processing, with 87 years manufacturing equipment for machining, drilling, cutting or forging steel from its Piedmontese cradle. Its leadership is maintained with a workforce of 1,000 workers around the world and 200,000 m2 covered in Varese, Italy, from where it manufactures all the parts for its equipment, from which it supplies its different subsidiaries.
Ficep Mexico is managed Joseba Herrero, a Ibero-Mexican expert who at its headquarters in San Luis Potosí reveals that most of its customers in the country are in the energy sector, to which it supplies towers, windmills and substations, as well as those who require metal structures for construction, forging machines in the automotive industry, or those who manufacture tanks, everything related to steelwork, as well as trains and metal shelving.
“When they buy carbon steel, they will always need equipment that we sell; we have the capacity to provide customers with all the solutions for the machining of metal structures for any process," says Herrero. "For example, if I see a profile, a beam, an angle or a plate in a workshop, we can do it; we have machines from 100,000 to four million dollars.”
Presence at FABTECH
Ficep has very important international business partners and some of them will be promoted during the metalworking fair in May at Cintermex. One of them is AGT Robotics, the biggest novelty to be brought by Italian company and one of the brands represented by Ficep worldwide. AGT is a Canadian company whose equipment usually accompanies Ficep's machines, but in the next step, thanks to a robot that does the welding of metal structure assemblies. If the Ficep machine cuts, drills, bends and places the parts, the AGT assembler receives them and the robot with laser marks the location of the complements and finishes the part.
Another brand that complements and is associated with Ficep is Corimpex, a small Italian company that has already installed more than 30 machines in Mexico, and has a very exclusive automatic submerged arc welding product that will also be seen at FABTECH.
Ficep arrived in Mexico in 2007, and has been present in all editions of FABTECH Mexico. This 2022 will be no exception. It has more than 260 machines in full operation in the country, with equipment whose performance is capable of producing 2.5 times more than most competing machines, says Joseba Herrera. "I have highly trained technicians, I know that the first machine is sold by me, but the second machine is sold by them, the service. The last three weeks I have sent technicians to Tijuana, Germany, New York, Merida, Mexico City, their level is already so high that Ficep in Italy hires me and we are installing machines in Germany, the Mexicans. We are a technical service powerhouse in the Americas," says the CEO proudly.
Since the Italian company has been involved in the development of high engineering, it embraced 4.0 technology long ago. "Industry 4. 0 is having control of the company in the data," says the executive, and points out that Ficep was one of the first to enter this trend –in Mexico, since 2010– to such an extent that it has its own software company, Steel Proyect, which makes it possible to automate and optimize the link between the office and the workshop by converting drawings into programs for CNC machines; develop algorithms for the best use of steel and enhance the capabilities of the shop floor with total shop floor control, from improving workflows, production monitoring, analysis and traceability of production and administration.
All this with a practical advantage: the machinery, even a very sophisticated one, has been made user-friendly. "We developed a machine as if it were a telephone, when I started working the people who operated them had to have studies and a qualification as CNC programmers, today the machine is totally visual, the person who operates it, if he knows how to use a telephone, knows how to use the equipment," says Herrero, who warns his clients that automation and their robots will not make them do without personnel, because they will hire more people in administration, sales, design, shipping. "But I tell them that they will remove the strongest handicap, that of the people who feel they are indispensable because only they know how to operate the machines."
Joseba's final promise at FABTECH is very concrete: "We have the solutions from the office to the shop floor for welding, drilling, cutting, band saws, plasma machines, punching machines, plate and profile rolling machines, we can help them with everything. We can integrate all the equipment so that customers have only one supplier".