Fratelli Piacenza, is a manufacturer of fine woolen fabrics and supplier to many world-leading apparel brand manufacturers, incl. Boss and INCO/Zegna, with strong expertise in collaborative SCM solutions. F.lli Piacenza woolen mill is one of the oldest textile industry in Biella, it was founded in 1733 and it is one of the leading companies in production of nap-fabrics of high quality in wool and nobles fibres. The Piacenza family business is a member of that international elite, les Hénokien, set up in France in 1981, of healthy companies that are at least two hundred years old and that have always belonged to the same family. The generation at the helm of the company today is now the eleventh.

Fratelli Piacenza is an SME: the number of employees is about 217 with a turn over of 30 Million of Euro in 2003. The production of fabrics is about 1.000.000 meters per year plus 60.000 pure cashmere clothing item.

The strategy is based on “quality of excellence” obtained by strict control of precious and rare fabric production, speed and highest quality are achieved by the help of information technology. Fratelli Piacenza use information technology like instruments to increase speed, efficiency and quality of production planning and management. F.lli Piacenza has been very receptive about new technologies and innovative tools for production planning and better service. The company participated as pilot user of MODA-ML project, PENELOPE project and Leapfrog IP and CA projects. The former aims to improve the intercompany process flow of the T/C supply chain by exchanging XML documents in a framework that integrates legacy system and Internet human operators, where large and small companies are viewed as distributed resources of the process. Penelope is an automatic production planner applied to the textile production process. NMP LEAPFROG IP (and CA) is the reference project for textile/clothing industry in FP6 and aims at transforming the clothing sector into a demand-driven, knowledge-based, high-tech industry.

Fratelli Piacenza’s Previous experience relevant to the tasks that have been attributed

Fratelli Piacenza will lead the deployment of iSURF Supply Chain Collaboration Pilot in Textile Supply Chain. The Company has been previously involved in many European Commission supported projects as an end user such as MODA-ML project, PENELOPE project and Leapfrog IP and CA projects.