Ana Valéria’s scientific contributions

During the 1990s, the Brazilian automotive industry had undergone some profound changes in its structure, with economic liberalization, the New Automotive Regime, new assemblers and autoparts plants and its insertion in the global strategies of multinational companies. Research, development and engineering (R,D&E) activities in local firms had also been transformed, and it seemed that Brazil was emerging as a peripheral product development center, in a process that was deeply analyzed by some GERPISA researchers (such as Carneiro Dias and Salerno, 2003; Consoni and Quadros, 2003). Indeed, in 2003 it was launched a new-to-the-world, locally developed technology which had had a great impact in local market: the flex fuel technology. From the institutional side, a new federal law (known as "Lei do Bem") which consolidates fiscal incentives linked to the promotion of R,D&E activities by local firms was promulgated in 2005. Since then, what has happened to R,D&E activities in the Brazilian auto industry? Did the flex fuel case help to promote Brazilian subsidiaries as a competence center to their headquarters? How did the industry react to the Lei do Bem? What is the current status of Brazilian subsidiaries, in which relates to R,D&E activities? Is there any kind of competition with other peripheral centers that might have emerged, such as China, India or South Africa? In this paper, it will be presented an analysis of the current profile of R,D&E activities in the Brazilian automotive industry, based on three different sources: data from the Brazilian National Innovation Survey (PINTEC) from 2003, 2005 and 2008; a survey, carried out in 2010, with 69 Brazilian autoparts companies, located in the state of Minas Gerais; and 8 case studies conducted in one assembler, also located in Minas Gerais, and seven of its first and second tier suppliers. Among other findings, the results showed that, in the Brazilian automotive industry, both the spending in innovative activities as a whole, and in internal R&D in particular, have increased in the period. Interestingly, autoparts companies were the main responsible for this increase, when compared to the motorvehicles firms. Both vehicle assemblers and autoparts have been reinforcing their local engineering in the period, hiring engineers and technical workforce, inaugurating laboratories, formalizing product development processes and increasing workers' qualification. Most of the firms rely on partnership with clients, suppliers and other firms in their group for their innovative activities. On the other hand, partnership with local universities and research institutes are much less common.

Innovation is a major concern in most automotive companies, either car makers or suppliers. Specifically in the case of powertrain system suppliers, capacity and ability to innovate may signify a strategy to survive in a world where environmental and market concerns constantly put automotive industry – and the way their products work – into question. In order to verify how a company may enhance its innovative capacity through organizational changes, a case study is being conducted in a Powertrain subsidiary, located in an emergent country. This supplier is part of a major European automotive group, and had split from the car assembler unit in 2001. Since then, it has been struggling for more independence from the headquarters as well as from the car maker unit (its major captive customer), and has being building in a more strong way its capacity to create new products. Conquering new markets is a strategic issue in this sense. The main objective of the research is to investigate how this firm can build a "learning platform", that is, an organizational structure designed to improve individual and collective competences, related to research, development, engineering and production, so as to promote innovation.

Introdução Neste trabalho mostramos uma maneira eficaz de incentivar os alunos para o exercício de Atividades de Ensino, Pesquisa e Extensão. Relacionamos duas importantes atividades: 1. Atividades Complementares, que comentaremos mais adiante, e, 2. as disciplinas Introdução à Engenharia de Produção I e Introdução à Engenharia de Produção II, com o intuito de fornecer um diferencial ao aluno do Curso de Engenharia de Produção da Escola de Engenharia. Esse diferencial vem da possibilidade do aluno exercer atividades fora da grade curricular sob a supervisão de professores altamente capacitados, tendo como principal atrativo conteúdos que seriam vistos a partir do quarto semestre, sejam brevemente relatados desde o primeiro semestre da graduação.