White goods' market is very competitive and companies are obliged to work continuously on new ideas and innovative proposals.

Indesit Company is one of the leading companies in Europe: every year it produces and distributes in the world about 14 millions of appliances with a turnover of more than 3 billion€.

The company operates with 17,400 employees in 18 factories and 22 trade offices in the world.

The main brands are Ariston, Indesit, Hotpoint and Scholtès. The company , established in 1975, is listed in the Milano Stock Exchange since 1987. In the last decade, Indesit Company managed to increase the market shares all over Europe and consolidated its own presence with outstanding production investments: the two new plants in Lodz (Poland) and in Lipetzk (Russia) represent an important step in the expansion strategy toward Eastern countries.

A similar industrial development process started in China at the beginning of 2005.

Innovation that means research and development of new ideas, products, processes and shapes has always been a strategic element of the group and one of the main success factors of the company.

"This is a very competitive field and we are obliged to work continuously on new proposals", tells us Massimo Rosini, CTO of Indesit Company. "And working hard is not enough. To reach good results it is necessary to be able to listen to customers and understand what they expect from us".

Mr. Rosini takes an Indesit catalogue and explains: "I point out on what customers expect from us because their expectations differ very much from one brand to another, for instance they assume that a German brands can be synonym of reliability, product long life, etc.".

He shows us a particularly attractive and unusually designed washingmachine: "The customer expects from us future-looking technologies, state of the art electronics and new shapes for eye satisfaction but proper working too. If a customer wishes to be reassured by German products, he wants to be astonished by ours".

Electronic innovation and ICT played an important role in the Indesit history with a continuous process of renewal. "In the 80's ICT innovation was limited to gadgets", Rosini goes on, "during the 90's market requested hidden functions, but in the third millennium the challenge is on smart appliances, networking and on-line services. Smart products able to generate, transmit and share information. In 1995 Indesit launched Margherita Dialogic, the first completely electronic washingmachine; it had 3 physical sensors and, thanks to fuzzy logic, other 16 virtual sensors. A large commercial success".

From 1995 to nowadays Margherita. What has been changed? We ask.

Rosini explains: "An age jump. Dialogic was a single product, now we have more than 500 commercial models based on a single common platform. In 2000 we revolutionized processes and electronics and ICT changed completely the production system: the process is now almost fully robotized. To obtain these results and above all to keep them for a long time", Rosini goes on, "it is absolutely necessary an R&D department thinking ahead not only 2-3 years but 6-7 years at least. Our R&D people not only are targeted to the product but they are looking for new materials and technologies and also future market drivers.

These are strategic values; so we established a special company called Wrap which is working since 2005. At the same time we rely on some top level external structures specialized in technology transfer, such as CEFRIEL.

All of this allows us to have a privileged and up-to-date observatory on basic research projects and results and a precise reading of the market requirements evolution, which are essential elements for the prompt creation of new successful products"