Focusing on customers wishes

Transcription

1 Focusing on customers wishes New worlds 37 This is Emanuel Cervantes Zozoya, an engineer at the fledgling location in Guadalajara, Mexico. Here in Mexico s second largest city, Bosch opened its first software engineering and engineering services center in the Americas in April It is hoped that the center will give an extra boost to calibration services, business intelligence, IT infrastructure, and validation services for external customers, especially from the automotive industry. But Guadalajara also offers support for other Bosch locations. However, what Cervantes Zozoya and his colleagues want is more than just good business. They want to speed up progress in eco-friendly technologies and put their know-how and international experience to work for their country s economic development. And they ve already made great strides annual-report.bosch.com/ customer-focus

2 In his leisure time, Cervantes Zozoya shows his Indian boss the sights of Guadalajara including the famous murals on the walls of Hospicio Cabañas, the former orphanage. 38 He found his passion early on: I could barely walk but I was already under the hood with my grandpa, handing him wrenches. That was in the mid-1980s, deep in southern Mexico, close to the Guatemalan border. Today, Emanuel Cervantes Zozoya lives some 1,400 kilometers away in Guadalajara one of the most beautiful cities in Mexico, as well as one of the country s key technology hubs. He has maintained his childhood passion for all kinds of vehicles. But some other things have changed since then. Cervantes Zozoya is now working on making car engines cleaner and more efficient than ever before. He is one of hundreds of researchers and engineers across the globe developing and improving gasoline direct injection systems at Bosch. This technology enables fuel consumption and emissions to be cut drastically. Combined with other measures, savings of up to 15 percent are possible, he says. After studying mechanical engineering in Mexico and Germany, Cervantes Zozoya worked in the United States. He has long since traded in his greasy wrench for a computer mouse. Above all, his interests are no longer just about coaxing stubborn junkers to run again: My grandfather had huge, ancient pickup trucks. Fuel economy was not an issue. We were happy if they ran at all. It wasn t unusual to use up to 20 liters of gasoline to go 100 kilometers. Back then, if anyone had told him I would be fighting to conserve every drop of gas, my grandfather would have dropped his oil can in amazement. The facility in Guadalajara is one of the newest in the Bosch Group. And it s also one that shows how international the company is. The center for engineering services and software is part of the Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions (RBEI) subsidiary, which is headquartered in Bangalore, India. Our investment in Mexico is a logical step, says Prakash Shenoy. After all, we want to make it as easy as possible for our customers in the Americas to work with us. The proximity to customers is critical. As Shenoy says, The time difference between India and Mexico is eleven and a half hours, and it s a 30-hour-plus trip. That s just too much to ensure the level of service we want to offer our customers. Shenoy, who is from India himself, heads up the engineering center, and feels very much at home in

3 Our investment in Mexico is a logical step. After all, we want to make it as easy as possible for our customers in the Americas to work with us. Prakash Shenoy, head of the Guadalajara engineering center 39 Mexico: The people are friendly, our colleagues are highly driven, and traffic is less stressful than in India, he says. The only challenge? He is a vegetarian, which is not always easy in the land of tacos and enchiladas. Yet he definitely has a taste for his mission: Setting up this facility is sheer pioneer work that calls for speed and agility. We re hiring new engineers every week, and seeing our business grow daily. The associates in Guadalajara offer comprehensive engineering services as well as IT and business-process solutions from a single source. While the center s main customers are in North America, it serves other Bosch locations as well. Shenoy and his colleagues are driven by something else, too: We want to help improve traffic safety in Mexico. Three million cars are built annually in Puebla, San Luis Potosí, and other Mexican cities. One in three remain in the country, but for reasons of cost, they are not always equipped with all the technology available. That s why we also aim to develop automotive technology that is tailor-made for the region, Shenoy explains. Local experts support the Bosch divisions, helping them come up with

4 40 Engineering partners: Alberto Sabas Hernandez and Ramon Baez Mora from the Bosch supplier Soluciones Tecnológicas, together with Emanuel Cervantes Zozoya. We re hiring new engineers every week, and seeing our business grow daily. Prakash Shenoy, head of the Guadalajara engineering center

5 local solutions for the region. The experience we have gained in India in making products appropriate for the region is extremely useful in localizing our products here, he says. Guadalajara is a good example of Bosch s growth and investment plans in the Americas. In Mexico alone, some 3,000 jobs are to be created by the end of A number of them will be in Guadalajara. Who knows? Shenoy says with a smile. Twenty years ago, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions started out with a handful of associates in India. Today, there are thousands of them. Emanuel Cervantes Zozoya is equally optimistic. We anticipate that more and more automakers will start using gasoline direct injection. The share of cars with gasoline engines featuring this technology will likely increase to nearly 30 percent worldwide in Thanks to strong demand, there is also pressure to develop increasingly efficient components. This is what prompted Cervantes Zozoya to join forces with other Bosch locations and a local supplier to develop a new test procedure for detecting leaks when the fuel in the distributor rails is under high pressure: It allows a key leak test to be conducted much earlier than before. Maybe this test will bring us the next, more fuel-efficient generation of engines a little sooner. Then Cervantes Zozoya will have saved more than a few drops of gas. His grandfather would undoubtedly be pleased and pick up his oil can again Gasoline direct injection: a success story Automotive technology is having to meet ever stricter emissions standards. By 2021, for example, the limit for vehicles in Europe will be just 95 grams of CO 2 per kilometer. One Bosch solution for efficient and economical powertrains is gasoline direct injection. In combination with downsizing and turbocharging, it offers a fuel saving of up to 15 percent. In this system, fresh air enters the combustion chamber through an injection valve. Under high pressure (approx. 200 bar), the fuel is injected into this air flow. This results in an optimum swirl effect and better cooling of the combustion chamber. The overall effect is greater compression and higher efficiency. As a result, cars consume less fuel, yet accelerate more dynamically. In 2012 alone, Bosch sold more than five million such systems. And the forecast for global growth is well into double figures. In 2016, every second new gasoline-powered vehicle in Europe will be equipped with this fuel delivery system, and this share will rise to more than 60 percent by Demand is also expected to rise strongly in two important automotive markets: the U.S. and China. In both markets, the share of gasoline-powered vehicles is greater than 90 percent. Moreover, emissions standards are becoming stricter there. To be able to keep up with this growth in all these markets, Bosch has manufacturing sites for gasoline direct injection systems in Europe (Germany, Turkey), the Americas (USA, Mexico), and Asia (China, Korea). 41