Diagnostic system innovations by Actia Italia
The Italian division of the French Actia Group has pursued work in a technical-commercial partnership with Fiat Group Automobiles. Thanks to the great autonomy of for their operations, Actia Italian has been able to consolidate activities on the Italian market through collaboration with others, including Case New Holland and Argo Tractors
Actia is a France based group with a global presence specializing in high added value onboard electronics and diagnostic systems for the automotive, industrial and agricultural sectors and telecommunications markets. Actia Italia is headquartered in the Turin area industrial district where agricultural mechanization manufacturers play a leading role and offer great opportunities for the company to grow and consolidate. Actia in Italy has maintained commercial offices in Turin since 1992 which then took a leap in status in 2000 through partnership with Fiat Group Automobiles (FGA) which gave Actia the job of developing, marketing and managing post-sales assistance for the Examiner Start, the then new diagnostics system for Fiat automobile CPUs. Management issues in the collaboration of the two enterprises required such deep commitment that the French multinational moved to create the Italian division, Actia Italia Srl, set up a few months following the understanding with FGA and given facilities for developing software for vehicle diagnostic systems and providing technical and logistics support. The high degree of autonomy given for the division's operations has enabled their staff to extend work beyond automotive diagnostics into other sectors of the group's activities to thereby increase the number of Actia's potential customers. This diversification strategy pursued by management in partnership with FGA has proven so effective that Actia Italian has penetrated and consolidated the division's presence in the sectors of agricultural machinery and special vehicles offering greater growth opportunities. Testifying to this success are the synergies formed with two industry giants, Case New Holland and Argo Tractors, which now equip their machinery with the Diag4ArGo diagnostic device for Argo and the CNH UCM (Universal Control Module). At present, the Actia Italia catalogue brings together entire families of products as does that of French Corporation, packed with electronic diagnostic devices which are Actia's core business. Up front are the electronic diagnostic devices which are one of the core business of the group. The French company was established for the purpose of creating this type of equipment and came up with their first diagnostic instrument, the XR25 developed in 1985 for Renault. With nearly thirty years of experience in the sector, the company can vaunt collaboration with the automobile industry majors which has allowed the group to export know-how to the agricultural mechanization and earthmoving markets and subsequently strengthen offers of products for CPUs in these sectors. These products are manufactured in series on demand, that is, customized to meet OEM construction requirements, and developed to fully comply with the ISO 13849 (Pld)/IEC61508 (SIL2) safety norms. With their skills in the field of diagnostics and control electronics the group has been able to extend production to bring in telematic platforms and IT systems for the management and maintenance of entire fleets of vehicles. In this sector, Actia Italia has become a center of competence for the development of telematic systems for fleets: vehicle data remotely transmitted to the CPUs are then archived on the company's server and then made available via the portal www.actiafleet.com where customers can access information on all the vehicles. The fleet management service was created initially for trucks and buses but in the near future the Actia Group will extend it for keeping tabs on agricultural and earthmoving machinery.