1.b: Transfer of Capabilities
Assure the availability and efficient transfer of measurements and standards capabilities to manufacturing and service industries,
universities, and other R&D-intensive organizations
Other Information:
Today’s technology-driven marketplace demands rapidly conducted and highly accurate measurements. NIST’s measurement services
support an increasingly diverse and dynamic group of customers whose needs rapidly change with advances in technology. NIST
must deliver high quality, rapid service and continually react to emerging measurements and standards needs. In technology-based
industries, NIST also needs to respond to quality and cost pressures that call for more measurements with increasingly high
precision and selectivity, as well as technically rigorous standards for product quality and production performance.3 In many
measurement-intensive research areas, the intense growth in data collection and data mining will outstrip currently available
techniques for understanding and ensuring data validity and integrity. , Simulation and modeling are now common and often
essential scientific tools, and are rapidly becoming an integral part of the planning, design, development, and discovery
infrastructure of U.S. industry. Similarly, efforts to tackle complex national challenges in homeland security, energy sufficiency,
and environmental sustainability will rely increasingly on simulation and modeling tools to guide decisions and policies.
Reliable use of these tools depends on the availability of trustworthy data across a wide spectrum of scientific and technical
domains. Assuring access to these data will demand new informatics methods and common data-sharing standards. As new technologies
become commercialized, the competitive performance and growth of U.S.-based industries will continue to be shaped by the technical
underpinnings of standards and tests for production process control, product quality and performance, and other aspects of
production and market exchange. In addition, since technology-based industries also produce and sell on a global basis, U.S.-based
businesses will need more rapid and extensive harmonization of different measurement and documentary standards systems. Increasingly,
access to foreign markets can be restricted by sophisticated measurements, standards, testing and certification requirements,
quality system registration, and other technical prerequisites. With the rapid move toward a global economy, many segments
of U.S. industry have identified harmonization with international standards as a high priority for maintaining global competitiveness.
NIST’s capabilities will be increasingly needed to resolve issues that often create technical barriers to trade.
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