The effects of the economic globalization increasingly demand more efficiency from the organizations' economic and financial policies. Once the production means no longer depend upon local or regional policies to settle industrial plants, it has demanded the perception that in order to get or to keep competitive advantages, it is necessary to combine factors, allied between strategies and costs. The quality-management tools, incorporated to the business units since the 1960's, allowed an great advance in the application of strategies to create competence, with cost management being supported by those new methodologies. This has been an important factor for competitiveness. The use possibility of an integration model comprising the competence strategy and the costs management will contribute in a decisive way to the alignment of the business units with the corporative policies.
competitive advantage; competence strategy; costs management