NIST Helps U.S. Manufacturers Build
a Technological Advantage

• NIST Laboratories: Measurements and Standards for Competitiveness
  • Aligned with Industry
  • How the Labs Work
  • Putting NIST Research Results to Work
• Baldrige National Quality Program: An Agent for Change
• MEP: Partnering with Smaller Manufacturers
  • Impact and Results
• Contacts
• Snapshot of NIST Programs
• Standards and Trade
• In a Capsule: NIST Services
• Working on the Supply Chain

The job of the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is to help the nation’s manufacturers—and other parts of the U.S. economy—create and capitalize on technological opportunities. NIST has a century-long tradition of working with companies of all sizes and with industries of nearly every type to develop and apply technology, measurement, and standards.

In the fiercely competitive global economy, NIST’s four programs and its staff of 3,000 are sources of technological advantage. (See “Snapshot of NIST Programs.”) Together, they help to speed the pace of innovation, ensure the mastery and application of new technology in products and processes, and advance U.S. technical interests in the increasingly important realm of international standards. (See “Standards and Trade”)

The agency occupies a unique and vital niche in the nation’s technology infrastructure. It focuses on important technical tasks that are prone to under-investment either because the resulting benefits are broadly shared or because the risks and planning horizons exceed the thresholds of individual firms. NIST’s contributions are delivered in several forms: technical services and tools, strategies and guidelines for continuous performance and quality improvement, industrial modernization assistance, and risk-sharing incentives that motivate U.S. companies to pursue next-generation manufacturing technologies. Planned—and often carried out in close coordination with the private sector—the institute’s outputs complement those efforts and are essential parts of a national foundation for technological progress and industrial growth.

NIST Laboratories: Measurements and Standards for Competitiveness

Firms in every industry rely on a toolkit of supporting, generic technologies. Integral to a company’s manufacturing capabilities, these indispensable tools range from tables of scientific and engineering data to statistical quality-control methods to reference measurements and techniques for ensuring accuracy and reliability. They are pervasive across factories and throughout supply chains.

Services and research results supplied by the NIST Laboratories help U.S. manufacturers to make products:

• right, from the very beginning of a new process and throughout production runs;
• interoperable, so that they can work efficiently in networks composed of disparate technologies that often are distributed about the globe;
• traceable, so that customers and suppliers can trust the accuracy of measurements that underlie quality and performance; and
• small, the means to improving efficiency and to delivering the new or enhanced capabilities that are made possible as the dimensions of part features grow ever smaller.

Aligned with Industry

Specializing in the critical area of measurements and standards, the work of the NIST Laboratories is integral to the performance of U.S. manufacturers and their efforts to be at the crest of innovation. Simply put, advanced measurement capabilities are tantamount to the advanced manufacturing capabilities needed to efficiently produce affordable, high-value-added products that can differentiate U.S. firms from lower-cost competitors.

Infrastructural technologies and services supplied by the Laboratories support the full spectrum of manufacturing activities—from the processing of raw materials into feedstocks to final product inspection to marketing and after-sales support.

The seven laboratories, assisted by NIST’s Technology Services outreach arm, are aligned with major industrial sectors or key technology clusters: manufacturing engineering, electronics and electrical engineering, materials science and engineering, chemical science and technology, building and fire research, information technology, and physics.

All work closely with U.S. industry, and all participate in sectoral planning activities, such as the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative, International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, Integrated Manufacturing Technology Initiative, U.S. chemical industry’s Technology Vision 2020, and National Plan for Building and Construction R&D. Often, NIST will convene industry, university, and government experts to scope out measurement and standards needs in established industries and emerging technology areas. Recent examples include workshops devoted to identifying infrastructural requirements for “smart” machine tools, establishing priorities for measuring nanotube properties, and determining interoperability requirements for manufacturing and construction operations.

NIST played a lead role in the formation of the Government Agencies Technology Exchange in Manufacturing in 2003. GATE-M coordinates and leverages complementary manufacturing-related research at six federal agencies. Initially, NIST and its five GATE-M partners are focusing on two strategically important areas: intelligence in manufacturing and nano- and microscale systems and technologies.

How the Labs Work

Planned in consultation with industry, most NIST projects are carried out in collaboration with partners from U.S. companies, universities, and government laboratories. The laboratories host more than 1,600 guest researchers each year. Collaborations address critical issues that range from modeling and improving machine-tool performance, advancing the state of the art in manufacturing simulation software, and developing new high-throughput methods for measuring the properties of advanced materials.

Putting NIST Research Results to Work

Results of NIST research lead to industry-accepted test and measurement methods, process models, interface standards, and other useful tools. Often, these outputs are the basis for product and process standards developed by industrial organizations. They also are embodied in the diverse array of measurement and data services that the agency supplies to manufacturers, testing laboratories, and other organizations. (See “In a Capsule: NIST Services”)

In industries ranging from electronics to radiopharmaceuticals and from chemical processing to aerospace, NIST-developed tools contribute to effective operations and quality products. The capabilities that they support often set the technical limits on what can be accomplished on the factory floor, in the R&D laboratory, or with suppliers and customers.

Consider the U.S. automotive industry, a long-standing customer of NIST measurement services. About 350 NIST-developed Standard Reference Materials—the equivalents of certified “rulers” that firms use to check the accuracy of their own measurements—support motor-vehicle production at nearly every step of the process, from the manufacture of sheet metal, windshields, tires, and transmission gears to final assembly and subsequent operation.

NIST also is helping automakers and their suppliers to extend their capabilities and to exploit new technologies. The agency is providing key technical assistance in an industry-wide effort to achieve true, cost-effective interoperability across the automotive supply chain. (See “Working on the Supply Chain”)

NIST's record of accomplishments in this critical area includes its leadership and key technical contributions during the development of a now international standard that allows product data to be shared among diverse systems. Officially known as ISO 10303 but better known as STEP, the Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data is a growing set of specifications that are creating “universal language” for sharing data within companies, with suppliers and customers, and across applications.

As adoption of the neutral data interface format grows in the automotive, aerospace, defense, and other industries, costly errors and duplication of effort (due to the need to re-input flawed data because of faulty exchanges and the need to maintain multiple, redundant software packages) are decreasing. A recent study, commissioned by NIST, estimated industry-wide savings currently exceed $150 million annually and are projected to exceed $900 million annually within several years. However, this figure is but a fraction of the savings that could be realized as software implementations of STEP multiply and the adoption rate among software users increases.

To help achieve this potential, NIST continues to contribute to industry-led development of extensions to the standard that will broaden the range of capabilities that STEP enables across the product life cycle. The agency’s manufacturing and information-technology researchers also are looking further out onto the horizon. They recently initiated a set of interoperability projects intended to pave the way for self-integrating systems—those that reconfigure themselves in response to new requirements.

Meanwhile, NIST materials researchers are characterizing key properties of advanced materials so that weight-saving, performance-improving alloys and other materials can be stamped or otherwise formed into cost-competitive fenders, hoods, and other parts of future cars and trucks.

Measurement needs are growing and diversifying in every area of manufacturing. In precision manufacturing—a label that applies to a growing portion of the discrete parts industry—dimensional tolerances are shrinking to sizes equivalent to ever smaller fractions of a split hair. Meanwhile, the shapes of parts and products are growing more complex.

In the continuous-process industries, manufacturers must continuously raise the threshold for levels of selectivity and specificity. Indeed, all manufacturing industries are being driven to improve processes, reduce waste, and raise quality. At the same time, emerging technologies present tantalizing prospects for novel products and processes, but they also introduce new measurement challenges that must be mastered before these opportunities can be fully realized.

Making those challenges more difficult, manufacturers today face a heightened need for securing information networks and for protecting other critical infrastructure essential to the manufacturing sector—a need that NIST also is addressing collaboratively with industry.

Baldrige National Quality Program: An Agent for Change

Since its creation in 1987, the Baldrige National Quality Program has played an important role in helping the United States regain and maintain its competitive edge and its world-class quality ranking among nations. But, the competitive race is far from being won. For manufacturers, in particular, quality now is a well-recognized mandate, not an option. Companies and other organizations worldwide know the competitive advantages achieved through quality and performance excellence. To attain and retain market leadership in the next century, U.S. organizations will have to improve continuously.

Whether an organization is small or large, has one site or multiple sites around the globe, the Baldrige performance excellence criteria help to assess and improve performance on a wide range of key indicators. For today’s competitive environment, the criteria have been updated to help organizations respond to current challenges, including evaluating governance and social responsibility.

Of the 59 organizations to date that have received the Baldrige Award, 34 are manufacturers. These include large firms, such as Motorola and Boeing Airlift and Tanker Programs, and smaller manufacturing businesses, such as Texas Nameplate Company, Inc., and Stoner Inc. For all, the Baldrige Award process has proved to be an effective tool for continuous improvement.

“We applied for the award, not with the idea of winning, but with the goal of receiving the evaluation of the Baldrige examiners. That evaluation was comprehensive, professional, and insightful. It reinforced where we were strong, and provided valuable information on areas where we could improve—making it perhaps the most cost-effective, value-added business consultation available anywhere in the world today.”—Bob Barnett, Executive Vice President, Motorola, Inc.

Following the Baldrige guidelines continues to pay performance improvement dividends, not only to the firms that apply for the award but also for the thousands of non-applicants that structure their organizational quest for excellence around the guidelines.

MEP: Partnering with Smaller Manufacturers

The Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership at NIST is a nationwide network of not-for-profit centers that assist smaller manufacturers in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. These local and regional organizations provide small and medium-sized manufacturers with the help they need to succeed. The centers are funded by NIST and by state, local, and private resources. The shared funding arrangement makes it possible for even the smallest firms to tap into the expertise of knowledgeable manufacturing and business specialists all over the United States.

Beyond funding, NIST plays an integrative role within the network. It links centers to assure effective collaboration and use of resources, and it builds partnerships with organizations with particular brands of expertise in manufacturing and business so that centers everywhere have access to crucial information and know-how. NIST also develops programs and resources in key thrust areas, such as lean manufacturing, industrial marketing, and pollution reduction.

Smaller manufacturers (those employing 500 or fewer people) account for 98 percent of U.S. manufacturing establishments and employ 11 million people. Many, however, have been slow to adopt modern production technology and practices. Productivity growth has trailed that of their larger counterparts, creating a gap that threatens future competitiveness. Many factors—from limited investment capital to lack of information to pressing day-to-day demands on management—underlie this widely recognized weakness in a strategically important part of the nation’s
industrial base.

Each MEP center works directly with area manufacturers to provide expertise and services tailored to their most critical needs, which range from process improvements and worker training to business practices and applications of information technology. Solutions are offered through a combination of direct assistance from center staff and outside consultants. Centers often help small firms overcome barriers in locating and obtaining private-sector resources.

Impact and Results

Evaluation is a key element of all NIST MEP programs and activities. In fact, “Systematic evaluation studies have confirmed that the MEP is having a positive effect on businesses and the economy,” concludes a report from the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Public Policy.

Results of evaluations are used to assess the effectiveness of services and their impact on the performance of client firms, and to help guide planning at both the center and network levels. By measuring short- and long-term impacts, the NIST MEP can assess economic returns on the federal investment in manufacturing extension services. Many studies are finding that small manufacturers who work with their local NIST MEP center show dramatic improvements. For example, in a survey completed in September 2004 of NIST MEP clients served in FY 2003, 4,865 companies around the country reported that, as a result of NIST MEP services, they:

• created or retained 50,315 jobs;
• increased or retained $4.1 billion in sales;
• realized $686 million in cost savings; and
• invested $912 million in modernization, including plant and equipment, information systems, and workforce training.

Contacts:

NIST Program Questions
Public Inquiries Unit
phone: (301) 975-NIST (6478)
e-mail: inquiries@nist.gov

NIST Laboratories
Manufacturing Engineering
Contact: Howard Harary, Acting Director
phone: (301) 975-3401

Electronics and Electrical Engineering
Contact: William Anderson, Director
phone: (301) 975-2220

Materials Science and Engineering
Contact: Eric Amis, Acting Director
phone: (301) 975-5658

Chemical Science and Technology
Contact: Willie May, Director
phone: (301) 975-8301

Physics
Contact: Katharine Gebbie, Director
phone: (301) 975-4200

Information Technology
Contact: Cita Furlani, Director
phone: (301) 975-2144

Building and Fire Research
Contact: Shyam Sunder, Director
phone: (301) 975-5900

Technology Services
Contact: Belinda Collins, Director
phone: (301) 975-4500

Baldrige National Quality Program
Contact: Harry Hertz, Director
phone: (301) 975-2036
e-mail: nqp@nist.gov

Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership
Contact: Roger Kilmer, Director
phone: (301) 975-5020
e-mail: MEPinfor@nist.gov

For more information, visit the NIST Web site at www.nist.gov.