T
HE EXAMPLE OF
A
LESSANDRO
Z
ANARDI REMINDS US THAT THERE IS NO ADVERSITY THAT CANNOT
BE TRANSFORMED INTO A WINNING RESOURCE
,
BUT
D
ALLARA
’
S COMMITMENT TO INTEGRATION
IS NOT LIMITED TO TECHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH
.
W
E PRESENT THREE STORIES THAT SHOW HOW
,
IF WE DON
’
T LOSE SIGHT OF THE HUMAN FACTOR AND THE VALUE OF WORKING TOGETHER
,
EVEN
THE GREATEST CHALLENGES CAN REPRESENT AN INCENTIVE FOR INNOVATION AND PROGRESS
27
A RESOURCE,
NOT A LIMITATION
L
The extraordinary achievements of
Alessandro Zanardi, and the overall
success of last year’s Paralympic
Games in London, helped to raise global
consciousness of disability. Perhaps for
the first time on such a truly
international level, sports fans from all
over the world were able to admire the
qualities of disabled athletes. Thanks to
the collaboration with Zanardi, Dallara
Automobili was directly involved in that
unique experience, and the images of
the hand-bike, designed and produced
in Varano for the driver from Bologna,
were beamed all around the world,
creating a great deal of interest.
But Dallara has always been sensitive to
the needs of disabled people, initially
concentrating on the sporting sector –
designing solutions for everyone from
grass roots level competitors right up to
top level athletes – before also
becoming involved in the workplace,
designing and producing projects that
combine high technology, research into
materials, and social responsibility with
attention to company organizational
requirements. The experience with
Handimatic, the exhibition concerned
with the application of technologies to
disabilities organised by Aldini-Valeriani
Technical High School in Bologna, which
included a detailed presentation about
Zanardi's adventures in London,
demonstrated Dallara’s continuing
commitment to this issue.
For this reason, this issue offers an
overview of Dallara’s work with
disabilities, concentrating on three
different stories; three examples of how,
nowadays, disability should be regarded
above all as a resource, a project
without any limits that society, and the
industrial and production sectors have
an obligation to invest in.
Behind the purely competitive aspects
of the first story, which concerns
Zanardi himself, there is a lengthy and
fascinating collaboration that resulted
in the construction of the high
performance hand-bike that Dallara
now places at the disposal of all the
athletes interested in using it. Engineer
Dialma Zinelli, the man responsible for
coordinating the hand-bike project,
reveals the technical aspects, the secrets
and the possible applications of the
bike in an interesting interview.
Following on from Zanardi’s success,
Dallara is now involved in another
project aimed at producing a
wheelchair specially modified for
another athlete who goes by the name
of Alessandro; the shot putter for the
CUS Parma team Alessandro Straser, a
triple silver medal winner at the Fispes
championships in Ancona in 2012.
Francesco Savi, an engineer from the
Dallara Research and Development
department, is working side by side
with Straser in order to ensure that the
end product suits his every need.
Engineer Savi, who has also been a shot
putter himself and so has a good
understanding of the specific technical
problems associated with this project,
explains how the collaboration is
progressing.
As we already mentioned, the human
and the productive values of disability
are by no means confined to the sports
field, and once again Dallara is able to
demonstrate the effectiveness of the
efforts and measures taken to support,
highlight, and integrate the resources of
its disabled employees into the social
and productive life of the factory to the
full. And who better to tell us about his
experiences than Gianluca Molardi, an
engineer for whom Dallara has created
a tele-working station, complete with
pedestal and face recognition software,
which enables him to get the best out
of the text elaboration and CAD drawing
programs? Together with the personnel
manager, Filippo Di Gregorio, and
Fabrizio Arbucci, the ICT manager, he
explains the positive aspects of this
experience, both in terms of the human
relationships within the context of the
company, and of the innovations in the
design of computers that use this type
of technology. Three different stories
but, just like Zanardi always reminds us,
three stories that encourage us to take
our dreams, together with the right dose
of realism, and transform them into
reality in order to maintain a sense of
enthusiasm and fulfilment every day of
our daily and working lives.
