A force measurement system is made up of a transducer and associated instrumentation.

The transducer is subjected to the force to be measured, and some resultant change in the element is measured by the associated instrumentation. The instrumentation may power the transducer in some way and also may process the output from the transducer before it is shown on an indicator to be read by the user. Strictly a transducer is a device that receives a physical stimulus and changes it into another measurable physical quantity through a known relationship. In practice a force transducer is a chain of several (usually different) transducers - for example the force may act upon a metal cylinder which is compressed by the force, the change in size alters the electrical resistance of a strain gauge bonded to the surface of the cylinder, and the instrumentation measures this change in resistance.

For many types of force measurement system the term load cell is in common usage in place of force transducer.

Such instrumentation may be as simple as a dial gauge or as complex as a computer with associated analogue to digital converters and excitation circuitry. The indicated value is the output of the force measurement system, which may be in units of force or other units such as volts. If the indicated value is not in units of force, then the user may need to perform a calculation based on a calibration to obtain the calculated value.

A force transducer is frequently built in as an integral part of a structure or machine, and many force calibration devices are themselves machines. It is often therefore difficult to consider the force measurement system separately from the application and this has many effects on the procedures for design, calibration and operation of the system.