Dialcos was founded in 1959 in Padua to offer food products that were both innovative and rooted in the flavors of Italian tradition.

Thus was born the first granulated vegetable broth, an alternative to traditional stock cubes.

Initially distributed by pharmacies, it soon reached Italian household pantries through supermarkets.

Over the years, Dialcos has followed the evolution of the market, continuing to innovate and reinvent itself. In addition to its classic granulated broth, it also offers clean-label formulations and organic products.

In 2005, Dialcos entered the world of high-quality gluten-free pasta, gradually adding recipes with original ingredients, combining innovation and tradition.

Dialcos' Kaizen journey began in 2011, when the owners realized they needed to compete with a rapidly evolving market: from niche products, granulated broth and gluten-free pasta had become consumer goods, dominated by major food brands. To avoid potential competitive tensions and take advantage of the generational shift that could drain valuable know-how, still unshared and untranslated into operational standards, Dialcos became aware of the need to move from perfect products to perfect production processes.

After an initial internal attempt, Dialcos turned to Leanbet.

"At first, we limited ourselves to applying a series of Lean tools," notes Alberto Buchberger, then CEO of the Padua-based company, "without sharing them with all the staff. Unfortunately, it was a failure. At that point, in Leanbet, I found a partner capable of prompting me and my colleagues to ask the right questions. Able, above all, to draw the answers from people."

With Leanbet's support, it became clear that an organizational paradigm shift was needed: it was necessary to address the growing production complexity associated with the strict regulatory constraints to which the Italian food sector is subject, and at the same time, it was important to preserve the flexibility typical of small businesses, that is, to valorize individual initiative.

Leanbet brings in some new talent, bringing it into the company, and builds a team of four (out of just over twenty total employees) dedicated to improvement. Dialcos begins investing in widespread, cross-functional training and radically changes its approach: no longer chasing mistakes, which generates blame and dampens proactivity, but trust and responsibility.

Five years later—in 2016—the entire staff embraces this corporate culture, revitalized by Kaizen.

The new organizational paradigm approaches complexity with confidence and combines standardization and flexibility. This process has enabled us to overcome many internal and external challenges and develop the talents of the future. An ecosystem of values, methods, and corporate culture.

“In parallel with process improvement,” continues Alberto Buchberger, “the corporate culture has grown, in terms of tools, awareness, and values. We have cultivated the potential of an SME and its people by further entrenching our values. The commercial challenge today is to create new market niches.”

Today, the improvement office has a distributed structure, with resources assigned to each department to work on strategic and procedural improvement within their respective departments. This achievement was possible because the training truly and profoundly impacted the entire company.