The company is an expert in the design of production spaces with specialization in the food industry

SMR in Saronno is a company specializing in food industrial design and was born from the union of two colleagues. From 1985, the year of its founding, until today, there have been many changes made to the business, including the transfer of ownership from father to son. A path that has led this reality to be honored, in 2019, with the “Excellence of the Year Innovation & Leadership Industrial Design” award. Explaining more about what it is all about is Eng. Nicolò Molinari, director and sole shareholder.

What is the path that has led you to today?
«The company was founded in the mid-1980s by Engineer Piero Molinari, my father, and a colleague with whom he worked in an engineering firm. After a few years of collaboration, however, they decided to separate and continue independently, continuing with design in the industrial field. Between the 1990s and 2012, the year of my arrival, there were a series of changes in the technological sphere that brought innovations in the design sphere as well: while in the past there was a tendency to produce less by giving more space to the quality of the product, today, on the other hand, there is a lot of production but concentrating production on a specific product, with a view to reducing costs. The moment I joined the company, I myself made changes at the technological and process level».

How is your design process model structured?
«The design process starts from the feasibility study and goes all the way to the construction of the building. It all starts when a client asks us for a type of product with certain characteristics. Albeit with little information, we define several design hypotheses at the preliminary stage, accompanied by an economic quotation of each, which we submit to the client for him to evaluate. The next phase is very articulated and time-consuming: it is the phase of requesting and obtaining all the authorizations, from the different bodies involved, necessary to proceed with the construction, in which we also define all the more specific aspects related to the project. In this phase, the engineering of the project also takes place, in which the detailed working drawings are drawn up in order to proceed with the tenders. Finally, we arrive at the project construction phase, in which we verify that the construction site is proceeding as authorized, checking the correct laying and installation of the designed components, giving general directives regarding time and cost, to ensure the quality of the finished product».

SMR boasts a wide variety of employees: there are people with a lot of experience behind them and young designers. The firm’s goal is to maintain an innovative thread in the work environment. It is a firm that invests heavily in its workers hoping to be increasingly competitive with large multinational companies.

Covid has made some changes, such as what?
«During the Covid period, working on two-dimensional files created many communication errors. For this reason, we have implemented design with software that allows designing in three-dimensions, based on BIM technology, which allows, in a cross-sectional and synergistic way, to take into account all the complexities of a project, from the architectural layout, to the structural mesh and the layout of the facilities that are to be built, thus allowing us to predict and resolve, already at the design stage, any interferences that might have been encountered at the construction site. This way of designing also makes it possible to accurately extract data from the model being drawn up and to reduce the costs of any unforeseen contingencies during the construction phase of the work. As a result, the team has been revamped: specialized BIM design figures have also been brought in. The conflict in Ukraine has also had important effects on us, who have been very present in the Russian market. Therefore we had to expand and make ourselves known again elsewhere».

SMR’s future plans include strengthening its positioning in both the Italian and European markets and also internationally. It is a very strong reality in the design of the food and beverage industry working almost all over the world with great success. The quality of Italian products is recognized everywhere, and many countries are looking for Italian technologies for the food industry. One of Nicolò’s dreams in the drawer is to open an office in New York: a dream to work for with even more passion.

Watch the TV interview on Business24