The business development of SPEA seems to be very similar to the popular story of a Silicon Valley startup that once began in a founder’s garage and then gradually gained a leading position in its area of interest. The firm has ventured from the smallest of beginnings to the major league of the ATE (Automated Test Equipment) suppliers within the 30 years of its existence. The enterprise, with a worldwide staff of around 500 employees, has become a market leader (approximately 38 % share) in today’s European board test arena, and has become the number three on the global board-test scene with about 15 % market share.
Also worth mentioning: The company is also on the way to becoming a feared competitor in the field of component test, especially for demanding solutions in the area of mixed-signal and power semiconductors. When Luciano Bonaria started the company together with some other ATE experts in the North Italian city of Volpiano near Turin at the end of 1976, the future role as a global player was far from their expectation. Instead the team pursued its mission “to provide the customers with outstanding test solutions which are also affordable”. As entrepreneur and CEO Bonaria says, “With our board and component testers we have put very high standards of performance and cost effectiveness into the systems which are, in these areas of application, unique in the industry”. As we can see now after 30 years this business concept has not only turned out to be optimal from an engineering point of view, but has also found thousands of satisfied customers worldwide who successfully master their test tasks in production with this equipment. This fact is regularly confirmed by independent market and customer surveys, for example by the U.S.-based VLSI Research for the topic ‚client satisfaction in the area of component test‘.
An important source of the high customer satisfaction and the success of the company is the worldwide support and sales network, which comprises large central company facilities in Germany, U.S.A. and Singapore, besides, of course, the headquarters in Italy, as well as qualified ATE representatives all over the world.
SPEA’s facilities cover a greater area than just the country in which they are located. For example, the corporation’s German branch also looks after Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Holland, Austria, Poland, Romania, Russia, the Czech Republic and the Ukraine. “Therefore, we are present under any circumstances where our customers are,” says Luciano Bonaria.
Currently, the ATE enterprise derives about 45 % of its turnover from Europe, around 38 % from Asia and the rest from the Americas, whereby the increase in growth meanwhile turns out to be greatest in the Southeast Asian region. When it comes to sales success and how to measure it, the following figures also provide good marks for the evaluation: globally installed base of board test systems of all kinds more than 2800, totally installed base of semiconductor ATE and handling systems more than 525 units. In this context SPEA has transformed from its role as a leading supplier of board test equipment into a renowned provider of semiconductor testers.
The total turnover of the enterprise has exceeded the boundary of 60 million euros for the first time ever in 2006. This business success has one of its main causes in a high quota of the expenditure for research and develpoment. Since its foundation, SPEA has continually reinvested about 20 % of its annual turnover in R&D on average; about 60 % of the employees are engaged in R&D, application design, service and maintenance. The high customer satisfaction derives from this utilization of the company’s resources in order to provide most efficient ATE solutions. The wholly privately owned enterprise has always financed itself from its own resources since its inception. Managing Director Luciano Bonaria has a good reason for his successful entrepreneur’s pride.
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