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8 FROM THE TOP » FLÁVIO SAKAI, AEA March 2019 | AutoData “Here in Brazil, manufacturer A or B lost projects abroad not due to lack of technical capacity but because of cost per hour and labor issues.” “It’s clear that the automotive engineer needs to become a mobility engineer. The world is no longer just the car, the product: it is service, infrastructure.” Will it be just that, therefore, thevocation of the Brazilian engineer? The Brazilian engineer profile is very good. Our problem has been competi- tiveness and not capacity. Manufacturer A or B lost projects abroad not due to lack of technical capacity but to cost per hour and labor issues. If the Brazilian engineer participates in a global pro- ject, that professional will have to work at any time. When it is day in Brazil the people of China and India are talking to us, working at night. They have a time flow and a demand that allows them to work practically 24 hours. But that does not happenwith the Euro- pean and the American engineer... No, but they are the know-how owners, they transfer a very large development mass to Asia. But ifwe have such capacity, why dowe have to submit to anAsia’s logic and not the opposite? We have to be competitive first. They are not bad, they have learned how to be good, they learn very fast. Here in Brazil there are several restrictions linked to the amount of hoursworked, additional costs etc. that make us lose competitiveness. The global projects have that charac- teristic, the periods of work are intense, they stay out of the normal flow. We lost projects purely for competitiveness, cost is the question. There is a business case and the projects involve not thousands, but millions of dollars. Is it possible to calculate that loss? Let’s say that if the cost in India is 50, it will be 75 in China, from 100 to 110 in Brazil, and inMexico something between China and Brazil.