The Pistoia area has long-standing roots in the mechanical industry and in the construction of rail vehicles and rolling stock which, as authoritative economics history studies have shown, date back to earlier than the first industrial revolution.

Today, it is clear that there is a productive system in place which, on the one hand revolves around the primary concern in the area, the Ansaldo Breda locomotive and rolling stock production plant and, on the other, also consists of a large number of well-established small and medium businesses who have developed as suppliers to Ansaldo Breda.

As a broad estimate, there are in all over 150 small and medium businesses in the system, with over 1000 employees, on top of which are a large number of micro-businesses at craft level supplying the more formally structured concerns. This is in addition to the approximately 1000 employees at the Ansaldo-Breda plant.

The greatest strength of the productive system in the Pistoia area lies in the fact that it has formed and developed in a coordinated fashion around its primary consumer which, in turn, has benefited from a geographically close and technically and operationally flexible supplier system. The suppliers have therefore grown together with the needs of the primary consumer, guaranteeing the productive and distributive capacity necessary for the successful fulfilment of contracts, which often pose complex productive and logistical demands.

The productive system in the Pistoia area has become specialised in the regeneration, reconditioning and maintenance of rolling stock and in the construction of new vehicles for urban transport and for railway line construction or maintenance work.

Pistoia therefore boasts a genuinely integrated system for the production of rolling stock, which involves all local businesses, with different capabilities in the following areas of specialisation: production (Breda and its supplier system on a regional and national scale, industrial concerns and consortiums and craft businesses and consortiums); design (professional studios, in-house design divisions, universities and research centres); commercial (promotion of the entire system in the Pistoia area for the production of rolling stock, entrepreneurial management of contracts for rail vehicles and feasibility studies using economic criteria of efficiency and effectiveness).

Today, the productive system is assessing opportunities for turning its skills towards other sectors, such as the nautical, aeronautical, industrial installation and automotive industries.