Let’s meet Andrea Dallargine, our Quality Manager.

PLEASE, TELL US YOUR PROFESSIONAL STORY AND HOW YOU ARRIVED IN EFFEGIDI

I have a purely technical education. I attended the Agrarian Technical Institute (a specific high school) and then I attended the Science and Food Technology BA Course at the University of Parma. Due to the fact that I have always had a natural predisposition towards the scientific subjects I chose a course that could offer more opportunities for a career compared to others in the same field, and since we are in the Italian Food Valley, choosing has not being that difficult.

Before Effegidi, I have always worked in Companies operating in the food industry and I gained there my experience from the moment I took my Degree in 2005 until 2017 when I received the offer to work as Quality Manager in Effegidi.

That offer left me a bit surprised: Effegidi’s core business was in the cables field and my training was not related at all to that market. I discovered that back then Effegidi had just launched a Business Unit dedicated to materials developed for the food contact and for this reason they were looking for a Food Technologist.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR CONTRIBUTION IN EFFEGIDI?

I really believe in the “team”. I strongly believe that Effegidi team works really well together and is cohesive, it is a group where everyone has their specific role. Mine is to guarantee the Certified Quality Standard to our customers and I do it by conveying any customers’ requests inside Effegidi’s reality.

PLEASE, TALK TO US ABOUT THE QUALITY CONTROL IN EFFEGIDI

The Quality Control is something more of a managing system rather than a process.

A voluntary system, and I state this as voluntary because there is no law to regulate it, Italian nor European, that dictates the use of a Quality managing system and even more so, certified. Besides by using the word “system” it is implied something that crosses the departments and involves not only one function, but every single person working in the Company (From the C.E.O. to the machine operator).

Everyone has a piece, small or big, of Quality tasks to do, and everyone contributes to manage the Company according to this system. To operate according to the system, rules must be set.

Simplifying to the core, these rules are usually procedures and instructions that can define managing/organizing aspects (e.g. how to issue a purchase order, how to process a Customer’s order etc…), or operative aspects (how to realize a joint, which blades must be used to cut a specific material, etc…). In both cases, procedures and instructions can be of two kinds:

• • Self-defined: The Company chooses which rules to adopt to set a standard for the internal work method.
  • Defined by the Customers: in this case, the request is specific and related to a single Customer.

Dividing the Quality Department in two: Quality Assurance and Quality Control is formally more correct.

The Quality Assurance manages those aspects related to the definition of internal procedures and instructions, to overseeing the requests that come from the Costumers (contained in the Technical Specifications), and even those aspects related to the control that this Managing System works according to the rules; in case of some not-aligned event occurs, the Quality Assurance coordinates the in charge company’s functioning in order to identify the causes, the corrective actions and, if possible, the improvements to be taken to reduce the probability of a repetition of that occurrence.

The Quality Control intervenes on more operative aspects related to the compliance control made on the specific characteristics of the finished products or the production process parameters. In short terms it involves internal analysis ran in compliance with a set monitoring plan (e.g. thickness, mechanical parameters etc…) and compliance control on process parameters (e.g. glue dosing, Corona treatment, etc…).

It is a complex process, hard to sum up in few lines.

Quality is a way of thinking, a managing method of an organization that involves using a set of rules in order to achieve a primary goal: within a constantly evolving market, the goal is to consistently improving our products’ quality produced to guarantee our Customers’ satisfaction.

PLEASE, TALK TO US ABOUT THE LABORATORY AND THE RECENT INVESTMENTS FOR THE EQUIPMENT

In June 2021, Effegidi has inaugurated the new Quality Control Laboratory, by moving the equipment in a new and more efficient space, increasing also the number of devices that can actually support the Company in the control process of technical parameters of raw materials, semi-finished materials and also the finished products, in order to maintain the goal of constantly guarantee the compliance of the safety and functionality requirements. Recently we have also made some investments on new equipment. But let’s move step by step.

Our already existing equipment consisted in:

• Dynamometers: these represents the most important devices to define and control the material’s mechanical parameters (Tensile Strength and Elongation at Break);
• Feeler Gauge: together with the Dynamometers, it is one of the historical devices of the Laboratory and it is used to measure the material thickness;
• Micrometrical analytical scale and circular cutter: they allow us to measure the weight for surface unit (g/m²), through the cutting of a sample of the material from a pre-set area (10 dm²);
• Edges measurement: similar to a magnifying glass, this device allows us to evaluate the quality of the cut of the materials, pointing out flaws that cannot be seen only by an unaided eye.

The new devices are:

• COF (Coefficient of Friction) Tester (glide): it is an equipment needed to measure the lubrication of a laminate composed by Aluminium/other metals (e.g. Copper). It is a versatile device, used to test materials both in the Cable Business Unit and in the Food Business Unit;
• Heat Sealing Tester (welding bar): with this device we can exactly determine the optimal values of temperature, time and pressure to weld and seal films (both mono-material and complex coupled) made of plastic, metal or other materials;
• Transmittance/Haze meter: the Transmittance/Haze indicator works according the ASTM D-1003-07 test method to verify the transparency and the transmittance of the transparent plastics; it is usually used to control transparent and translucent materials;
• Heating Drying Oven: a new oven, more efficient compared to the previous one, used for heat retraction test, drying tests, high temperature resistance tests and controlled aging simulations;
• Gas Chromatograph: this device allows us to run screening tests on different components or solutes in a mixture, defining each and every component both in a qualitative and quantitative measurements.

WHICH IS EFFEGIDI’S FUTURE WITHIN FEW YEARS?

In one word: I see it “protagonist”. Protagonist in the wiring and food packaging fields. I think that Effegidi has the all the assets and the right personnel to do it. Since I have been working in the Quality department for 17 years I can say that I am witnessing that the engagement rules are steadily getting tighter and tighter, but I strongly believe in one thing: we are ready!