The art of leadership is practiced by many, but only mastered by a very few. To assume responsibility, exhibit expertise, and personify compassion, is what it takes to be a celebrated leader. One such individual who retains these qualities is Moises Pontremoli, the founder and President Director of PONFAC, a Brazilian Machine Vision Automation Company. Being a prolific leader, Moises displays expertise over the industry through leading the innovation his organization ceaselessly caters to.
Elucidating his academic qualifications, Moises holds an Undergraduate Degree in Electrical Engineering, a Master’s Degree in Industrial Automation, and multiple MBA degrees in Business Administration, Business Intuition, Business Identity and a specialization in Business Management.
Talking about his mission in life, Moises expresses that firstly, his roles as an individual, a father and a leader, have shown him that we are solely responsible for our destiny. He comprehends that everything that works out, is our responsibility, and everything that goes wrong is also our responsibility. Moises states, “If we want to find a culprit to inflict the blame for our mistakes, we will always find one, but if we want to be more, we must understand that we have to be both, the protagonist and the antagonist of our lives. We can reach wherever we wish, as long as we are willing to pay the price to achieve our goals.”
Secondly, as a driver of PONFAC, Moises is on a mission to seek the supply of more and more Products and solutions that enable more efficiency and quality of life for his company’s customers and their customers. For this, Moises and his team at PONFAC work with innovation to seek solutions which achieve these goals. Since 1997, PONFAC has developed comprehensive solutions for automated visual inspection (artificial vision) oriented to industry, retail and urban environments. The company aims to improve its customers’ performance with innovation and intelligence in image processing. PONFAC’s competitive advantages include self-innovated technology, round-the-clock innovation, international partnerships, numerous successful use cases and rapid return on investment, and presence in several vertical markets.
The Onset of Excellence
Moises’s career has always been based on certain fundamental aspects that can easily be seen in his curriculum and professional performance. Constant training, constant self-criticism, self-accountability for his results, have been the fundamental driving forces of his professional and personal journey. “Just because I want to be responsible for my destiny and inheriting a legacy form an entrepreneur father, this has always been my goal, since the Faculty of Electrical Engineering,” says Moises.
The turning point for Moises and his team was while developing the fruit picker for the company that involved three main technologies, viz. image processing, industrial automation, and fruit transport. During the development of this machine, they learned the harsh feathers that the needed technologies, which the company takes care of every detail to study and collect the necessary information, had already been optimally developed. The fruit transport technology which wasn’t paid due attention to because it seemed dominated, was where the company had the greatest difficulties and budget overflow.
One of the conclusions that the company derived was that it acclimatizes to all the upcoming challenges for PONFAC. “Everything seems easy when it’s the other one that does. If we don’t take care of the details, they’ll be our limiters,” states Moises. Another conclusion was that all the team members are angels of a single wing, and to fly they have to embrace. “This is a verse of Luciano de Crescenzo, an Italian writer who inspires us to take the partnerships as a basis for advancing faster and getting farther,” Moises expresses.
Outlasting Adversities
The primary challenge for PONFAC is that it is in a limited market (Brazil), with a smaller scale than its global competitors. “To overcome this limitation, we are moving precisely in innovation, so that we can have solutions that can be replicated in the global market, increasing our scale and our competitiveness,” states Moises.
Commenting upon the approach, in which he is guiding his team to tackle such difficulties, Moises states, “Because I believe that each of us has to take responsibility for our goals, I work with my team so that each of them also sets their individual goals and often reviews and presents the solution plan when necessary.” Moises is of the opinion that by doing this, everyone can be enables to always sense what is limiting their progress, plan how to overcome those limitations, and grow as professionals and leaders.
From Local to Global
Talking about PONFAC’s accomplishments, Moises says, “We have a client, Gunnebo that is a leading Swedish retail loss control company which had a need for a Brazilian customer of theirs, a supermarket, which needed to innovate to decrease losses in the front of the POS. They had already had a non-successful experience with a competitor of PONFAC. They had indications of our model of innovation in image processing that is based on win-win partnership with our customers. They decided to invest in one more attempt, this time with PONFAC. The success was absolute for both companies and for the market, bringing an innovative product that controls the loss in the POS of supermarkets, already placed in thousands of points in whole of Brazil while planning to soon expand to the other countries and other innovations in development to continue innovating and improving the efficiency of Gunnebo’s customers.”
Passing on the Keys to Success
In his Advice to the future entrepreneurs, Moises says, “Take responsibility for responding to your results and constantly analyze what was right and what was wrong. Understand the limitations that caused the errors, and plan quickly and constantly how to override these limitations. Understand that with the current speed in which the world changes, you become much more agile and competent with partnerships than trying to do everything yourself.”
Moises’s future endeavors include internationalization of PONFAC, creation of other companies with similar values, and sharing with new entrepreneurs his experiences so they can get farther and faster with their ventures.
Moises Pontremoli
