I’m Michele Campi, an Italian operations professional who decided that the work I’d been doing for years was changing fast enough that I should learn to build the systems that were changing it.

My professional background spans two domains of mid-market reality in Italy: a couple of years in commercial roles for an insurance broker serving SMEs and small commerce, and seven years in operations controlling within manufacturing — production scheduling, cost analysis, margin per machine-hour, the unglamorous economics of how mid-market companies actually make money.

Over the past two years I’ve been observing closely how Italian PMI are digitalizing their operations: replacing spreadsheet infrastructure with custom-built ERPs, integrating WMS modules, figuring out where AI assistants fit into existing workflows, and discovering that the hard part isn’t the technology — it’s the bridge between domain knowledge and technical execution. From this perspective — close enough to see what works and what doesn’t, deep enough in the domain to know which questions matter — I realized two things at the same time. First, that this kind of domain perspective is what most mid-market manufacturers will need to bridge IT and operations over the next three years. Second, that I could now build software myself, with AI assistance, on a level that wasn’t accessible to me before.

So I started building.

OptimEngine is the result so far: a production-grade optimization service that wraps Google’s OR-Tools as both a REST API and an MCP server that AI agents can call directly. Live on Base, Solana, and Arc testnet through the x402 protocol — agent-native payment infrastructure that’s emerging right now in 2026. The math behind it (constraint programming, Monte Carlo, CVaR risk analysis, Pareto frontiers) is the same category of math that enterprise software vendors charge mid-market companies €100-300K/year for. I built it as a public proof that this kind of capability can be made accessible.

I write about both sides of this work:

  • The frontier tech I’m exploring (MCP servers, x402 payment rails, agentic infrastructure) — because I think it will reach mid-market manufacturers in 1-3 years, and being early is cheap
  • The operational realities I know from years inside Italian mid-market companies — because almost nobody writing about digital transformation has actually carried the weight of operations from the controlling chair

What I do

I started my career as a business controller in Italian mid-market companies — manufacturing and SME insurance brokerage — and over the past two years I’ve added software development to my toolkit, with AI assistance closing the gap between operational understanding and technical execution.

This positions me to do something specific: translate business problems into technology that actually addresses them. The specific shapes this takes today:

  • Operational audit + quantitative analysis: a focused assessment of a scheduling, planning, or capacity utilization problem, ending in a written report with findings, modeled alternatives, and ROI estimates — typically 2-3 weeks
  • Working prototypes and proofs of concept: building a functioning prototype that demonstrates whether an idea is viable, before committing to a full project — typically 1-2 weeks
  • Technical roadmap and architecture review: a written document that helps a business team evaluate a project they’re considering — current state, proposed architecture, step-by-step roadmap, cost and effort estimates, alternatives considered
  • Bridge work between business and technical teams: ongoing presence in projects where the business knowledge sits with operations or controlling but the technical execution sits with an internal IT or external consultant — translating in both directions, catching misalignments before they become costly

Where to find me

If you’re a mid-market company thinking about how to modernize operations without the Big Four invoice, or a builder working at the intersection of operations research and agentic infrastructure — I’d genuinely like to hear from you.

This blog documents both worlds: the operational reality of mid-market businesses today and the frontier tech that’s coming next. The two converge faster than most people expect.