1. In a few words, tell our readers the Marposs story and its origins.

The company was established in Bologna (ITALY) in 1952 by Mr. Mario Possati (1922-1990) who had the idea of making the first in-process system for inspecting parts during the grinding process, allowing improvements in the quality and quantity of parts made by machine tools. The company is currently led by Mr. Mario Possati’s son, Stefano Possati, the President. Marposs is able to deliver applications and service support virtually anywhere in the world, in traditional sectors such as automotive and mechanical processing, and in emerging market sectors such as aerospace, electro-mobility, consumer electronics, with an export share of 94% of its production.

  1. Marposs is global leader in precision measurement equipment – what trends do you see in your primary industries, like automotive, and how are they impacting product development?

In times of great changes, Marposs is taking up the challenge to remain a strong reference for the automotive market in the e-mobility era. The traditional product lines are integrated with new technologies to provide a mix of gauging, inspection and testing solutions that ensure the complete monitoring of the production process of the main Electric Vehicle components and assembly.

We offer a full range of solutions for the control and optimization of various manufacturing steps, quality control of individual components, up to the final assembly operations.

Furthermore we offer Leak Testing equipment, both Air and Helium technology, for manufacturing of lithium-ion battery cells and packs for EV’s to avoid dangerous fire threats due to the volatility of the materials being used.

Besides the EV Industry, the Consumer Electronics and Medical Equipment Industries are also taking advantage of our Leak Testing equipment to verify that their products are waterproof.

Finally the use of our optical inspection solutions, chromatic confocal and interferometric system is essential in providing quality in large scale manufacturing of semiconductors, display components, Virtual Reality solutions and Autonomous Driving devices for EV.

  1. While headquartered in Italy, why did Marposs decide to establish a Silicon Valley presence?

Marposs landed in Silicon Valley in January 2000 with the acquisition of Millennium Automation of Fremont, California, a provider of automation support to a variety of industries, with the goal to expand to the disk drive industry exporting our Optical Inspection technology already a success in Italy with Pirelli cables. We immediately developed the OptoFlex Inspecting for HDD (Hard Disk Drive) and with our presence in Fremont we started supporting our first Silicon Valley high technology customers Seagate and Western Digital.

In the last decade, with the goal to diversify, the Group entered business with industries producing surgical prosthetic parts and Consumer Electronics produced respectively in Europe and China. The more recent attention to the revolution of the Electric Mobility triggered our HQ to a total restructuring of the Fremont facility creating a strategic logistical base to propose our technologies and develop new applications with Tech Industries of the Silicon Valley.

In January of 2018, we opened the new Fremont facility on Fulton Place and started working in symbiotic relationship with all the industry clusters surrounding the Bay Area, such as the Electric Vehicle of the East Bay, the Semiconductor Cluster of South Bay, the Consumer Electronics Cluster of the West Bay, and the surgical, medical, dental equipment Cluster of the North Bay, without forgetting our origins, solutions for supplier of mechanical shops as 1st, 2nd, 3rd tiers of above mentioned clusters centered in Fremont but spanning from San Jose to Oakland.

  1. Your Fremont operation exudes the Italian sense of style with a state-of-the-art showroom and R&D center.  What can customers expect to find or experience when they visit the facility?

For sure our customers can expect the Italian hospitality with real Italian hot espresso when visiting our Fremont facility. Then we will accompany our guests on a hands on tour of our latest technologies and applications in our showroom. Our customers can bring their samples they wish to test, and together with our engineers, inspect them in the well-structured lab. They can even play with our technologies led by our experts. In addition, we can sit down and discuss specific needs and study personalizations of a product or application that they are interested in. It will be our job to later report and discuss those personalizations with our R&D team in Italy. The strong know-how connection with our HQ in Italy is the lifeblood that feeds all our activities in the Silicon Valley and returns back to HQ as new application experiences from this fantastic incubator of ideas.