Abstract: This work reviews the economics of standards, conformity assessment procedures and the trade of Brazilian industrial products. It also evaluates the associated economic impact resulted from their product certification based on international best practices. Four leading products were chosen: steel, bus coachwork, automotive tires and cement. The production time series of these products (made available by governmental agencies) were fitted by means of the multiple linear regression method. The method was successfully applied at a 5% level of significance (a probability value –p-value– lower than 0.05 guarantees the existence of non-zero polynomial coefficients).
The simulation investigated the combined economic impact of (i) the regionalization process that has led to the establishment of a common market in the South Cone (Mercosur); (ii) the exposure of the Brazilian market to international trade competition (the opening up of the Brazilian economy in the 1990’s); (iii) product certification and (iv) the monetary inflation in Brazil, in the period. Each individual impact was documented. The product certification proved to be beneficial as 15.1% growth in production of cement, 12.4 % in steel, 11% in automotive tires and 13.3 % in bus coachwork were observed.

Migration of components from plastic packaging into foodstuffs or into medicines is a very important issue, concerning public health. Using experimental techniques, like gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, these essays measure total migration and specific migration of components from plastic packaging. This work presents an explanation and applications of a numerical technique tool for this measurement, allowing the comprehension of the diffusion process and the estimate of component migration in difficult or impractical measurements. As an application example, the non-uniform influence of initial concentration profile on the migration is presented, demonstrating the necessity of this profile determination for high quality considerations on involved metrology.

Due to the fast advancement of manufacturing technologies for micro- and nanostructured components the need for sophisticated inspection methods increases. The paper on hand discusses the prerequisites for automatic execution of inspection plans. Main goal is to enable automated dimensional measurements of micro- and nanostructured components instead of executing functional tests. Besides reducing manufacturing cost this approach enables the setup of a closed quality loop which allows a higher level of efficiency. It provides a constant feedback to the manufacturing processes and to the design process. Based on the latest state-of-the-art the setup and operating principle of a closed quality loop for dimensional inspections is described. Vital part of the closed quality loop is a multisensor system consisting of adaptive, intelligent sensors with cascaded measuring ranges. The paper provides a novel and consistent overall view of dimensional inspections of micro- and nanostructured components and how they will be executed in the future. This paper shall deliver a significant contribution to the birth of industrial nanometrology which must overcome the limitations of research oriented nanometrology.

The paper is based on a long-term programme of research on mathematical modelling and computer aided design of instruments and instrument elements in the Measurement and Instrumentation Centre of City University London. It considers the principal generic problems of computer aided design of instrument systems and aspects of the research agenda that arises from them. It describes recent advances in the computer aided design of sensors and actuators.

The metrological system is presented in its structure as a network, and as such analyzed in view of its efficiency. It is shown that the general strategies adopted at this regards in the small-world networks can be usefully exploited in this case, and some empirical solutions are derived.