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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Chapter 1

NIST-wide Issues

Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×
This page in the original is blank.
Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×

INTRODUCTION

The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 created the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) “to promote U.S. economic growth by working with industry to develop and apply technology, measurements, and standards.” The mission of NIST's laboratories is to focus “on meeting U.S. industry's needs for technology infrastructure, including standards, measurements and measurement technologies, evaluated data, manufacturing process models, product-performance tests, and quality-assurance techniques” (Setting Priorities and Measuring Results at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, Gaithersburg, Md., January 1994).

NIST's in-house research and development is performed in eight major organizational units: the Building and Fire Research Laboratory (BFRL), the Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory (CSTL), the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL), the Computing and Applied Mathematics Laboratory (CAML), the Electronics and Electrical Engineering Laboratory (EEEL), the Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory (MEL), the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory (MSEL), and the Physics Laboratory (PL). Ongoing programs in each of these eight laboratories are broad in scope and discipline. Efforts range from short-term, highpriority projects to meet immediate industrial or other government agency needs for measurements, data, and technology to long-term fundamental research designed to further the state of the art in basic measurement and standards technology, maintain NIST's basic expertise, or anticipate industry's measurement, standards, and data needs 5 to 10 years out.

TECHNICAL PROGRAMS

Relevance to Mission

The Board's consensus is that NIST laboratories are doing a good job of balancing their in-house development of precompetitive technology, their provision of technical assistance to NIST's Advanced Technology Program (ATP) for the development of high-risk technologies with high commercial potential through contracting, and their provision of critical national infrastructure services (measurements, standards, and data). NIST laboratories are becoming effective in collaborating in industry-wide planning (a prime example is EEEL's extensive participation in the Semiconductor Industry Association's efforts regarding directions for semiconductor research and development over the next 15 years). Such proactive collaboration with industry assists NIST in better anticipating industrial requirements for NIST services.

NIST expects to shift a significant percentage of its funding from other (federal) agency (OA) funding to direct appropriations from Congress for Scientific and Technical Research and Services (STRS) in order to respond to its expanded mission without significantly increasing its staffing. The Board's consensus is that programs currently supported by OA funding at NIST that are key to NIST's expanded mission should continue, supported by either OA or STRS funds. The Board also emphasizes that it is imperative that NIST continue to take advantage of advances in the electronic dissemination of information and the automation of measurement and calibration services to increase the efficiency with which it delivers its services.

Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×
Management Challenges

NIST's laboratory programs have an ever present challenge to increase the impact of their products and services. In the case of standard reference data (SRD) and standard reference materials (SRMs), NIST 's meticulous records of sales provide user profiles that indicate the scope of impact. A current challenge to NIST managers is to use similar metrics in assessing the relevance and impact of their products and services. Examples of metrics that would indicate the impact of NIST programs on the competitiveness of U.S. industry are (1) the number and annual product volume of industrial enterprises that provide financial and/or human resources; (2) the number of users, suppliers, or employees that benefit; and (3) the number and value of the measurements, products, services, problems solved, new or improved hardware or software developed, and redesigns transferred from NIST programs to industry. The use of such metrics in program management and better use of NIST's Office of Technology Services are two supplementary approaches to improving the impact of and justification for NIST's programs.

NIST created a major challenge for itself by initiating a plan to create the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) in fiscal year 1995, which will focus relevant NIST resources and expertise in helping government and industry build and use the National Information Infrastructure. NIST plans to launch ITL by merging NIST's Computing and Applied Mathematics Laboratory and Computer Systems Laboratory. A major challenge for NIST is to avoid degrading the core competencies and technologies within CAML and CSL that underpin many of NIST's other programs and services in the process of creating a national resource for the development and dissemination of information infrastructure services (metrology, technical standards, and technology). To best address this challenge, key CAML and CSL staff should be principals in identifying the NIST-wide internal support services that the merged organization should retain and the criteria for selecting the ITL director. In addition, CAML and CSL division management should team with the incoming ITL director in defining ITL's mission, scope of expertise, strategies, and structure. The many internal services that ITL will provide should include collaboration with other NIST laboratories and the Office of Technology Services in improving external access to NIST's wealth of technical information.

Interlaboratory Teams

Prompted by industry's rapidly growing interdisciplinary approach to the development and fabrication of products and services, the Board continued its fiscal year 1992 and 1993 emphasis on NIST's need to promote the formation of interlaboratory teams for interdisciplinary research and development. NIST already has a number of interlaboratory teams (e.g., those involved in the Alternative Refrigerants, Microelectronics Packaging, Green Buildings, and Fire Modeling projects and initiatives), and NIST 's neutron reactor, Cold Neutron Research Facility, and Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility support interlaboratory research. Furthermore, NIST's management encourages interlaboratory research programs, interlaboratory initiatives, and interdisciplinary competence-building proposals and sponsors workshops for creating interdisciplinary research programs. In addition, allocations for competence-building projects involving interlaboratory collaborations increased from 14.5 percent of the total dollars available to the Competence Building Program in fiscal year 1993 to 24.6 percent of the total dollars

Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×

available in fiscal year 1994. Also, between fiscal years 1991 and 1994, the percentage of NIST's budget initiatives involving more than one laboratory rose from 16.7 to 34.8 percent.

The Board commends the healthy growth of interlaboratory research at NIST but argues that there are historical impediments to interlaboratory research at NIST that could be subtly amended. First, NIST's criteria for recruitment of individual investigators have focused almost exclusively on the quality of technical expertise, a desirable traditional strength of NIST laboratories. Second, managers have usually been selected from among NIST's individual investigators, who have often been inexperienced in interdisciplinary, systems-type research. Third, NIST's system of recognition and rewards seems to have emphasized individual rather than interlaboratory research. Fourth, NIST's tight funding has caused laboratory directors to protect their staff rather than invest in interlaboratory ventures. The effectiveness of the Office of Intelligent Processing of Materials and the Office of Microelectronics Programs in fostering interlaboratory research by providing funds demonstrates the positive influence of adequate funding on interlaboratory research.

Links to Extramural Programs

The Board's fiscal year 1993 findings on the impact of NIST's extramural programs on its intramural programs still hold; i.e., “the impact of NIST's extramural programs on its intramural programs has been positive to date” (p. 9).1 NIST laboratory directors continue to report that NIST's extramural programs offer their laboratories opportunities for collaboration with industry and a window on customer needs. For example, the Physics Laboratory reported particularly successful collaboration with industry through the ATP; the success of its collaboration with the Optical Systems Corporation of Albany, New York, on a neutron focusing project was highlighted as a case in point.

Should the ATP grow as rapidly during the next several years as the Clinton administration and Congress currently plan, ATP's fiscal and technical impact on NIST laboratories will be substantial, providing NIST laboratories a plethora of opportunities for initiating activities relevant to industrial competitiveness that will be of benefit to all participants.

Recommendations

NIST management, particularly NIST laboratory directors, should:

  • Maintain OA-funded programs that are key to NIST's mission, and maintain OA contacts that help keep NIST abreast of national need for NIST services and whose programs can benefit from NIST's advice;

  • Base program and service priorities on surveys of the needs of potential users (clients) and the potential impact of NIST's products and services;

    1  

    The source of the fiscal year 1993 findings and recommendations referred to and quoted throughout this report is the Board on Assessment of NIST Program's An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs: Fiscal Year 1993 (National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1994).

Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×
  • Collaborate with ITL and the Office of Technology Services in expanding external access to NIST's technical resources; e.g., expand NIST's provision of on-line databases;

  • Emphasize interlaboratory research in strategic planning at all organizational levels;

  • Place high priority on interlaboratory activities when allocating resources; and

  • Use parallel and complementary ATP and laboratory objectives in planning.

STRATEGIC PLANNING

The Board's last several annual assessments have endorsed and complemented the strategic planning issues raised and the recommendations made by NIST's statutory Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology. The Board notes considerable progress across all laboratories in strategic planning as NIST responds to its enhanced mission and as strategic thinking becomes more critical. However, there is still room for improvement; most NIST laboratories tend to use their strategic plan more as an archival document than as a management tool. Effective use of increased funding along with an increasing industrial demand for NIST's services dictate dynamic planning. It is now time for NIST laboratories to make their strategic plans more uniform in quality and format so that they can become NIST-wide management tools applicable at all organizational levels.

Uniformly, NIST laboratories have identified meritorious goals and have good ideas on how to achieve them; however, associated metrics are needed for tracking progress and making mid-course corrections. Metrics for NIST programs should incorporate time tables and milestones, assess the adequacy of resources required for reaching those milestones, and identify intermediate deliverables at each milestone as well as final deliverables. Such metrics will help provide a rationale for assigning high priorities and additional resources to critical steps in a project or program. Metrics such as patents, standards-setting committee participation, industrial collaborations, and invited or published papers are invaluable in the management of NIST's dissemination of information, development of test methods, and leadership in the scientific and engineering communities but have limited value in the management of NIST's collaboration with industry in the development of industrial technology.

The management of NIST's laboratories might look to the ATP for guidance in designing metrics. ATP's metrics look beyond technical achievements, research and development milestones, and technology transfer to consider new products and processes introduced, commerce and job creation, gains in sales and market share, and cost and improvements in the quality of products and services. In recognition of the relevance of ATP's metrics, MSEL has begun to fold the results of the ATP selection and review process into establishing priorities for MSEL's projects in support of industry.

Total quality management (TQM) methodology would be useful in assuring efficiency of operation and client satisfaction, a step that is particularly important in view of NIST's funding climate.

A shortcoming in the strategic planning of NIST's major laboratories is that divisions too often do not have counterpart plans, even though NIST programs are generally managed at the

Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×

division level. This lack of follow-up in strategic planning at the division level causes the Board to wonder whether the division-level managers have “bought in” to broader laboratory objectives. Division-level strategic plans approved by a laboratory's director would be convincing evidence that division-level activities were coordinated with the laboratory's master plan.

Adherence to strategic plans by project managers is a critical aspect of project management; however, the desirability of organizational nimbleness, i.e., the capacity to respond to unexpected opportunities, should not be ignored. A strategic plan should be a living document subject to continual testing and revision as external circumstances change. The ultimate test of a strategic plan is customer feedback regarding the relevance of the objectives and anticipated achievements. The organizational nimbleness that is so critical to fulfilling NIST 's expanded mission should not be used to justify the seeming tendency of some individual investigators at NIST to favor opportunism and professional preference rather than adherence to strategic plans.

Recommendations

NIST laboratories should:

  • For program management, use metrics that gauge contributions to economic growth in the United States in addition to those that gauge technical progress. Metrics used by NIST's ATP would be particularly applicable for managing projects dedicated to the development of industrial technology;

  • Extend strategic planning to the division level; and

  • Include key customer groups and principal collaborators as participants in or reviewers of strategic planning and management.

RESOURCES

With its increased emphasis on contributing to U.S. industrial competitiveness, NIST's expanded charter has driven major budget increases and has required NIST to increase its focus, timeliness, multidisciplinary team efforts, and interaction with industry. In support of NIST' s expanded charter, Congress increased NIST's fiscal year 1994 appropriations for STRS to $226 million, a 17 percent increase over its 1993 appropriations for STRS. The administration supports NIST's request for a further significant increase in its fiscal year 1995 appropriation for STRS.

Staffing for Change

NIST's current management and staff have adapted well to changes in the scope of NIST'S mission and program. However, further adaptation will require training and/or hiring technically competent management and staff that can work effectively with industry and in multidisciplinary and multilaboratory teams. Several NIST laboratories are surveying the skills of their staffs and

Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×

comparing them with emerging needs. The Board and panels look forward to reviewing the results of these surveys during the coming fiscal year 1995 program reviews.

Using STRS Growth Effectively

The Clinton administration intends to increase NIST's annual appropriations. NIST's strategy is to use the increased appropriation to implement its expanded mission without significantly increasing its staff. This strategy dictates that NIST downsize its OA contracting. The Board endorses this strategy provided that OA-funded programs consonant with NIST's expanded statutory mission and strategic plan are retained and that NIST laboratories remain able to support and complement NIST's ATP.

Reducing Dependence on OA Funding Strategically

NIST will reduce its dependence on OA funds strategically by downsizing OA programs of low priority to NIST's mission; however, NIST should be mindful of the impact on OA missions, and, at the least, allow reasonable time for OAs to make other arrangements. In some areas, bridging between OA and new STRS funding may cause problems in optimizing personnel assignments and, in extreme cases, may deter the ready use of new STRS appropriations to compensate for OA downsizing. For example, within MEL, organizational units with OA funding that is up to 80 percent of total funding may experience difficulty in satisfying OA needs during rapid conversions from OA to STRS funding.

Even when OA-funded work is concluded for strategic reasons, NIST should maintain working relationships with other agencies that have common technical interests. Such agencies provide channels for transferring NIST's technology and help in identifying needs for NIST services.

Staffing Limitations and Increased Funding

It seems clear to the Board that if NIST “does business as usual” while its expanded charter and increased funding bring more work to the laboratories, the planned staffing cap of about a 10 percent increase will not accommodate the increased workload. However, such a cap will force NIST to initiate additional desirable outreach efforts and leverage its resources in better ways, leading to increased collaboration with industrial and other government laboratories. The feasibility and desirability of “outsourcing” some of the critical NIST services such as calibrations or SRM preparation should be considered, provided that strategic programs are not managed by non-NIST staff. Staffing limitations should also lead to more interlaboratory collaboration as internal competition for funds declines.

Because it will be less dependent on special laboratory space than the other major laboratories, the proposed Information Technology Laboratory along with various offices reporting to the director of the Office of Technology Services, is scheduled to move off-site for several years to accommodate the refurbishment of NIST's facilities in Gaithersburg, Maryland. If, as the Board expects, ITL's mission becomes more extensive than the sum of the missions of its

Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×

predecessor laboratories, ITL will need substantial increases and/or changes in staff and space. ITL will also need broad-band connections for communication and collaboration with the rest of NIST, space for additional guest collaborators, and a residual presence on the main campus to maintain ties with NIST's other laboratories and offices.

Retirees with Critical Knowledge and Skills

Several of NIST's key senior technical and management leaders are retiring or are near retirement; for example, the retirement plans of the directors of the CSL and of the Statistics Division of CAML were announced during the fiscal year 1994 program reviews. Early decisions regarding replacement should be made to avoid any slowing in program momentum.

Facilities and Equipment

With the exception of several specific requirements discussed in subsequent chapters of this report, facilities and equipment requirements are well addressed in NIST's budget plans. However, the prospects for funding the exceptions seem uncertain. For example, the BFRL has discussed the need for an expansion of the full-scale fire test facility (Building 205) with the BFRL assessment panel during each of the last several annual assessments. BFRL's assessment panel believes that the expansion is justified but has not been able to ascertain NIST's funding priority or plans.

As it downsizes OA funding, NIST must be prepared to allocate resources for operating research facilities such as the High-Accuracy Cryogenic Radiometer and the Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility, which are critical to NIST's mission but will be at risk without OA sponsors.

The issue of satellite machine shops dedicated to specific laboratories, divisions, or groups for specialized fast-turnaround work is currently being examined by MEL management. The Board considers the issue to be important to NIST's laboratories and looks forward to reviewing MEL's findings and recommendations.

Recommendations

NIST laboratory directors should:

  • Proactively train selected staff to lead team projects and interact with industry, by, for example, arranging for and encouraging temporary assignments for qualified staff in industrial forums or trade associations, as industrial fellows, or in other roles; and

  • Consider the feasibility of outsourcing carefully selected traditional NIST services, but ensure that strategic programs and nationally critical services are not managed by non-NIST staff.

Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×

INDUSTRIAL IMPACT

Outreach

The mechanisms developed by NIST laboratories to establish and strengthen industrial ties are as varied as the nature of the activities and programs of the laboratories. Some NIST laboratories focus on individual contacts within industry through collaboration, hosting of guest researchers, visits of NIST personnel to industrial laboratories, and dissemination of relevant research results in publications such as NIST's Technology at a Glance, a quarterly publication that reaches industrial customers and major professional organizations. Other NIST laboratories are much more heavily involved in industrial activities via NIST-sponsored or NIST-convened conferences and consortia. Cooperative Research and Development Agreements and other cooperative research agreements are common throughout NIST 's laboratories, and NIST's researchers are active in professional organizations and voluntary standards-setting committees, often holding leadership positions. NIST laboratories also provide industry with many SRMs, scientific and engineering databases, various calibration services, and laboratory accreditation. Electronic dissemination of information to industrial customers is becoming more widespread in the laboratories as a supplement to the traditional means of disseminating research results in scholarly and professional journals and at conferences and seminars.

Effectiveness

NIST laboratories emphasize development of technology and delivery of infrastructure measurement services that enhance public safety, the competitiveness of U.S. industry, and the performance of U.S. scientific and engineering communities. To be effective, NIST program managers identify nationwide needs and define responsive programs through joint workshops with users and other collaborators. When feasible, consortia are established to implement the programs and disseminate the resulting technology. EEEL's participation in efforts leading to development of the Semiconductor Industry Association 's Semiconductor Technology: Workshop Conclusions (SIA, Washington, D.C., 1993), commonly known as the SIA Roadmap; MSEL's collaborative Dental Materials Program; MSEL, MEL, and CSL 's jointly sponsored NIST/industrial consortium on powder processing; and BFRL and CSTL's joint development of alternative refrigerants are but examples of NIST's well-focused, effective programs for the development of technology. The SRM and SRD programs are examples of focused programs for providing infrastructure services. Building performance measurement, standards, and data; fire, earthquake, and wind design guidelines and performance standards for damage control; identification and analysis of toxic substances and substances of abuse; and law enforcement standards are examples of focused programs established at NIST for the benefit of society.

Technology Services

NIST's Office of Technology Services oversees a wide array of offices that provide industry, government, scientists, engineers, and the general public ready access to NIST's

Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×

standards, technology commercialization, measurement, technology evaluation and assessment, and technical information services. The scope of the technical services provided by these offices, the importance of their roles within NIST, and opportunities for further expansion of their outreach capabilities are worthy of note. The offices operating under the banner of Technology Services are a major NIST asset that is critical to the optimum success of NIST's laboratories.

Recommendations

NIST laboratory directors should:

  • Seek formal industrial feedback at the conclusion of laboratory projects in order to better assess laboratory impact and design ways to increase laboratory effectiveness; and

  • Expand their use of NIST's Office of Technology Services as an outreach arm for the laboratories.

NIST RESPONSES TO FISCAL YEAR 1993 RECOMMENDATIONS

NIST-wide Issues

The Board's fiscal year 1993 recommendations focused on strategic planning, data programs, research balance, the impact of extramural programs, collaborations with industry, interlaboratory teams, and total quality management. The Board's comments on NIST's responses follow. (The Board's observations on NIST'S interlaboratory teams are included above in the section “Technical Programs.”)

Strategic Planning

Issued during fiscal year 1993 to provide a unified framework for strategic planning across the NIST laboratories, NIST's white paper Setting Priorities and Measuring Results at the National Institute of Standards and Technology recognizes that strategic planning must be a continuing activity that involves customers and those who control policy and funding for U.S. research and development. NIST laboratories responded commendably to the challenges presented in the document. Nevertheless, in some cases, planning is too short term; in other cases, programmatic plans are not commensurate with the magnitude of the projected budget increase. Also, within the laboratories there seemed to be a lack of grass-roots awareness of major laboratory master plans or metrics that identify anticipated impacts that can be used to establish priorities, manage the projects, and assess progress. The Physics Laboratory developed a particularly notable response to NIST's master plan, complete with proposed actions specified down to the division level.

Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×
Data Programs

NIST's SRD services meet a vital need of industry and the scientific and engineering communities, but the development of standard reference data is not always perceived by the staff to be as exciting as work in enabling technologies. NIST recognizes the limitations placed on its data programs by the many years of level funding and is requesting a modest budget increase for those programs in fiscal year 1995. NIST is beginning to use the Internet to advertise the ready availability of its scientific and engineering databases and plans to host a conference of leaders of science and engineering in industry, government, and academia to identify and set priorities for national data needs and to explore linkages between NIST's data programs with ATP projects and industry.

Research Balance

In its fiscal year 1993 overview (p. 8), the Board recommended a strategy for balancing fundamental research, laboratory-based standards work, and generic technology research, calling, in particular, for an expansion of NIST's Competence Building Program, the transfer of successful competence-building projects to base funding, and a doubling of the current number of postdoctoral fellows. NIST proposes to focus competence-building projects on core areas of basic measurement standards and data but does not plan to increase the annual level of funding. Increases in STRS funds will be used to build the new balance into the research programs and maintain successful competence projects. NIST will request an appropriation for doubling the annual number of National Research Council postdoctoral fellows in fiscal year 1995.

Impact of Extramural Programs on Intramural Programs

The concern expressed in the Board's fiscal year 1993 overview (p. 9) about possible negative impacts of NIST's extramural programs (e.g., the ATP and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership) on its intramural (laboratory) programs continues to be unwarranted. NIST has avoided the danger of the laboratory programs becoming subordinate to the high-visibility extramural programs, notably ATP, by adding ATP managers from outside, thereby conserving laboratory personnel resources, and by transferring a small fraction of ATP funds to relevant intramural projects. Increases in STRS funding will make the laboratories even less dependent on extramural funds.

Collaboration with Industry

NIST has a large volume of industrial collaboration; however, it is predominantly with large and/or high-technology firms and well-organized trade associations. The Board comments that NIST laboratories should be more proactive in seeking industrial collaborations with less-organized industrial sectors; for example, in addition to asking industry what it needs, NIST

Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×

should submit the laboratories' early-stage proposals for programs to appropriate industrial sectors for assessment.

Total Quality Management

The Board concluded in its fiscal 1993 overview (p. 16) that “NIST could contribute to the competitiveness of U.S. industry by adopting and proving the worth of TQM for R&D and then by perfecting and disseminating [the] principles of TQM for R&D.” This conclusion was followed by a set of three specific recommendations.

Apparently, NIST did not fully respond to the Board's fiscal year 1993 recommendations regarding TQM. The Board noted only a few cases (e.g., in the Statistical Engineering Division of CAML) in which TQM had been adopted at the bench level. The Board understands that research scientists and engineers often resist the formalism of TQM, but it points out that much of TQM's philosophy is appropriate for the management of research and development and that data-driven decision making is integral to the scientific method. NIST is well positioned as manager of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Program to adapt the principles of TQM to research and development on at least an experimental basis. The Board endorses the exploration by NIST's Executive Board of the desirability and feasibility of a Baldrige-like experimental program for NIST operating units. The Board also cautions NIST to fully explore the cost versus the benefits expected before adopting the Board's fiscal year 1993 recommendations regarding TQM.

Major Laboratories

The Board's assessment panels found that EEEL, PL, MSEL, and CAML were particularly responsive to the panels' fiscal year 1993 concerns; the assessment panels for CSL, BFRL, MEL, and CSTL reported various levels of responsiveness. Details on the responses of the individual laboratories are to be found in Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8 through Chapter 9 of this report.

Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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Suggested Citation:"1 NIST-Wide Issues." National Research Council. 1994. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9198.
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