NIST: Advancing U.S. Manufacturing
Strengthening the Economy… Creating and Retaining Jobs

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce with a 100-plus-year track record of serving U.S. industry and the public, contributes to every facet of a competitive manufacturing enterprise.

For example, did you know:

• U.S. automakers and their suppliers, which account for more than 3 percent of the nation’s GDP, rely on NIST standard reference materials to ensure quality in a wide range of tasks, from the processing of materials to final assembly, to emissions compliance?

• NIST-developed performance-measurement methods have accelerated the adoption of new manufacturing capabilities, such as accuracy-enhancing software for machine tools, and led to new technology, such as laser tracker measurement systems used increasingly in the aerospace, automotive, and other industries?

• NIST tackles the difficult, fundamental R&D questions that are vital to keeping U.S. manufacturing at the state of the art?
  • NIST led the development of STEP—a common format for transferring detailed product specifications between companies and customers—estimated to save industry $180 million annually, a savings projected to grow to $900 million in a few years?

• U.S. companies increasingly depend on NIST to help ensure access to global markets that create new business and jobs?
  • Eighty percent of global merchandise trade is influenced by testing and other measurement-related requirements of regulations and standards set by other countries and international organizations?
  • The application of these seemingly arcane standards and related testing requirements will make or break U.S. companies—and determine the fate of many American workers.
  • Without NIST, U.S. manufacturers of such products as glucose and cholesterol test kits—in vitro diagnostic (IVD) devices—wouldn’t be able to meet requirements of new European Union regulations and would have been shut out of European markets where they now have more than 60 percent of the business?

• NIST is helping U.S. companies to get a fair deal—and the jobs we need?

• By providing hands-on technical and business assistance to the smaller U.S. manufacturers through the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, NIST is helping those companies to retain and create new jobs, become more productive, and succeed in markets both domestic and foreign?

• In a survey completed in September 2004, covering projects completed in fiscal year 2003, 4,865 clients of NIST’s Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership reported that, as a result of Hollings MEP services, they:
  • realized almost $686 million in cost savings;
  • invested $912 million in modernization, including plant and equipment, information systems, and workforce training;
  • increased or retained $4 billion in sales; and
  • created 14,882 jobs and retained 35,433 jobs?

• The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest honor awarded by the President of the United States to U.S. organizations for their performance excellence and quality achievements, is managed by NIST—and the award criteria are used by thousands of companies to improve their products and services?

• The total economic benefit of the NIST Baldrige National Quality Program—which receives little federal funding—is estimated at almost $25 billion, for a benefit-cost ratio of 207 to 1?

• More than 240 new technologies—products, processes, and services—have been commercialized thanks to competitively awarded, cost-shared funding from the NIST Advanced Technology Program during the high-risk proof-of-concept stage.
  
  
  Created: June 30, 2004
  Updated: 08/14/07
  Contact: inquiries@nist.gov