Abstract
Increasingly, the survival of industrial firms is related to the possibility of offering products and services in conformity with the most recent international standards. However, the mastery of Infrastructural Technologies – IfT (metrology, standardization and conformity assessment) – is not only a requirement for the international competitiveness of a firm but it is also the basis for the effective accumulation of Technological Capabilities (TC) which are needed for innovation as well as the continuous improvement of the quality of products and services. In the existing literature, rare are the studies that analyze the role of IfT in the technological learning process of a firm. This work intended to fill that gap by proposing a model to assess and project the dynamic interplay between IfT and TC. The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between IfT and the effective accumulation of TC in the firms. The study was carried out through a survey, whose instrument of research was a questionnaire applied in a sample of 103 firms of different levels of TC in metal-mechanics industry. It can be concluded that the IfT contributes with the effective accumulation of TC in all levels and the results showed that there are significant associations between: (i) accreditations ISO 9001/TS 16949 with the reversal engineering activities; (ii) accreditations ISO 17025 and of certified products in their production lines with incremental innovations in their products; (iii) ambiental accreditation by ISO 14001 with radical innovations in products/processes, activities of JIT, Kaizen, TQC/TQM and the use of information integrated systems; and (iv) innovatory systems of measurement with P&D practices and relationships with C&T institutions.
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