Many will remember the name CIR (Cooperativa Industriale Romagnola). We’re talking of the 90s and amongst the people working for Cefla today, those who live in Imola and surroundings, and anyone who might have seen the CIR building from the A14 motorway, many will recognise the what is portrayed in this old photograph.
The CIR affair was a tough and painful episode. CIR was founded just after World War Two and its production was split into two areas: the MEDICAL branch, known as Anthos, where dental units and chairs were made for dentists and laboratories; the ALUMINIUM branch where structural parts in aluminium such as window frames were made for civil constructions.
Difficulties began for the ALUMINIUM branch in the early 90s when the building and construction sector was hard hit by the crisis. In May 1996 the local League of Cooperative Companies sent one of their own experts to examine the situation and envisage a counter-strategy to address the emergency. To avoid losing both an economic and cultural heritage, Cefla was asked to incorporate CIR.
Today Cefla implements an extremely effective management control system. A team of 9 experts provides the Board and Management with the key data enabling them to immediately monitor each business area in a uniform fashion. All company processes are involved: R&D, sales, purchasing, production and after-sales service, and all branches and factories around the world are included.
The importance of timely availability of data and the ease with which they are handled by management, as well as the need to evaluate decisions using multiple scenarios, are the guiding principles on which we base and improve our management control system. Thanks to business intelligence software, all managers can access profit and loss data and sales statistics from any part of the world. Being able to manage budgets and forecasts electronically in a simple way on a web-based platform allows us to quickly develop multiple scenarios and keep pace with a highly competitive environment which never stops evolving.
