TES

  EDAM PhD Leaders for Technical Industries, MIT Portugal Program

 COMPANIES AND TECHNOLOGIES COURSE, 2011/2012

We invited Adolfo Gomes da Silva for our course session on 26th October 2011, 14:00 - 17:00, in EDAM Room, IST (Lisbon).

Adolfo has been a major player on one of the most important industrial projects in Portugal, after 70's: INLAND, the General Motors plant in Ponte de Sor (Alentejo), a company that became one of the best GM part plants. He helped to install it, became its plant manager and later leaded the operations to close it, when Delphi (the parts and components spill over of GM) decided to leave Portugal. 

This the story of a foreign investment case that helped to change Alentejo and Portugal, a case of successful advanced industrial engineering in Portugal and competitive technological innovation in operations by the worldwide car components industry. Also a case of  achievements by portuguese workers, engineers and managers in the international competitive market of the industry. But also a case of the driving forces of change in the structure and localization of the global car industry at the end of the 20th century.

A key issue to discuss at the end of the session: are there limits for (local) technological innovation in the big competitive world of global markets? Are local competences, skills, innovation sufficient to compete in the worldwide foreign investment markets?

Posted some years later, this page remembers that session and posts the work of the students around it. It can be helpful case material for discussion by historians, scholars and students.

EB, 26 july 2017

More photosof the session.

Video clip of full session: (i) low quality file (230MB) (ii) good quality file (2GB)

Additional materials to read:

- Who makes the car 2012, Global Automotive Supplier Review, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, 18 April 2012 (pdf)

- Delphi Automotive PLC Delphi v2.0: Leaner, Greener and Stronger; Initiate at OW, Morgan Stanley (investment research note), 27 December 2011 (pdf) 

- Complementary interview, 25 july 2017 (Adolfo Silva, by EB and Sergio Nunes) (audio)

Terms of reference for C&T 2011, Assignment #2 (team work):

GM/Delphi case:

The case of GM/Delphi is quite important and deserves further work. To begin with, let’s make a contribution making Adolfo presentation available for further inquiry. This is a collective effort of all the groups.

Each group must contribute with an edited transcription of part of Adolfo video record, last class. G#1 must deal with first 1⁄4, G#2 with second 1⁄4, and so on (4 groups).

Note: An edited transcript it is not a “word by word” transcript, but text should be edited in order to be easily readable, without loosing the important details or biasing the ideas. There is a big difference between spoken and written language. An edited transcription should be easily readable.

Transcription of oral narratives is a very important research method in social sciences and also in engineering. This exercise is also intended to train these skills, as well as to contribute to our oral collection of interviews. (As an example, some transcripts of previous interviews are available here ).

Transcripts of the video clip by groups, Assignment #2 (2011):

G#1: Jakub Kwapisz, Miguel Oliveira, Carlos Veiga (pdf) (min 0-20 of the video) 

G#2: Lídia Teixeira, Masood Bodaghi, Miguel Vieira, Pouya Samani (pdf) (min 20-30 of the video)

G#3: Arsalan Farooq, João Azenha, Nuno Valverde (pdf) (min 50-70 of the video)

G#4: Inês Costa, João Figueiredo, João Lopes (pdf) (min 70-end of the video)