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National challenges

Prosperity

Delivering measurement solutions to maximise innovation in Advanced Manufacturing

Enabling UK organisations across all industrial sectors to innovate and compete

NPL is creating value and impact across the UK through the measurement infrastructure. We enable enterprises to maximise productivity, accelerate growth, acquire capability and talent for future markets and improve performance through innovation.

We verify and validate incremental and radical changes of products, processes, services and technologies to help provide tangible impact for industry. These can be measured in several ways:

  • Increased profit – reducing the amount spent realising a product, process or service for the enterprise value chain
  • Improved agility – enabling companies to move quickly and easily to respond to new assurance needs for products, processes and services​​
  • Enhanced competitiveness - optimising assurance in the end-to-end industrial system​ to be as good as, or better than others, of a comparable nature
  • Increased productivity – identifying the effectiveness of productive effort as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input​
  • Safeguarding resilience – the ability to rapidly adapt and respond to all involuntary interventions in the industrial ecosystem ​
  • Empowering sustainability – helping to create products and services through economically sound processes that minimise negative environmental impacts while conserving energy and natural resources

Industrial enterprises make a significant contribution to maintaining and growing national prosperity, and there is a global challenge to improve productivity and competitiveness to ensure long term economic growth. NPL's priorities are determined through the government strategy, investment in target areas, the innovation required to deliver change and industry readiness for industrial opportunities.

Advanced materials metrology strategy

Discover how we are identifying how critical drivers of change, including the energy and the digital transitions, require innovation in measurement capability and a new approach to delivering the UK materials metrology infrastructure.


Download the strategy

Manufacturer Measurement Network

Helping the UK supply chain to enhance productivity, agility and competitiveness

Find out more

Our metrology is making a difference

We work with industry to improve productivity and resilience in an agile, competitive and sustainable way. Providing excellence in measurement science and innovation, we cover all aspects of the product lifecycle:

  • Design - supporting the designer through ‘know how’
  • Test - meeting the regulatory needs of products or services
  • Make - assurance through data acquisition and analysis of process or product
  • Use - qualify process/product for thorough life capability management 

Manufacturing industry has a long-standing acceptance and understanding of the benefits of metrology, particularly for physical measurement. Standards, operating procedures, protocols and artefacts are widely used, which will facilitate the progression of metrology to support the acquisition and use of data to enhance industrial prosperity.

NPL is supporting manufacturers to:

  • meet existing regulatory or legislative requirements
  • provide the capability that underpins a broad range of research areas
  • sustain core metrology capability for UK business within existing laboratories
  • realise and maintain the SI units and primary measurement scales at existing scope and uncertainty levels

Contact us to find out more about our work in prosperity and learn more of the expertise available through collaboration with our experts.

Contact us

Working with NPL

Our researchers are at the forefront of new innovations that promise to deliver new solutions to enhance prosperity. We play a vital role in providing reliable data for to develop the standards and assurance to accelerate new products to market. Learn more about our research areas and working with our experts.  

If you have a research collaboration where our expertise can help, please contact the team and discuss your challenge.

Contact us

Case study

Optimising the mechanical properties of nanocomposites

Article

Case study

Using polymer composites in offshore environments with confidence

Article

Case study

Validating magnetic sensors for the oil and gas industry

Article

Case study

Measurement training improves efficiency for Lockheed Martin

Article

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Find out more about the range of work we do in advanced manufacturing.

Work with us

Our research and measurement solutions support innovation and product development. We work with companies to deliver business advantage and commercial success.
Contact our Customer Services team on +44 20 8943 7070