Most of the cutting-edge industry sectors including nanotechnology, bio, and semiconductors, the measurement technology is the key point for international competitiveness. In the U.S., it is presumed that even the semiconductor industry alone spend nine billion dollars per year for the measurement devices. Because of the mass retirement of skilled labors and the labor force decrease due to the depopulation, the new product development and the productivity, advantage of "monozukuri" industry of Japan, are predicted to deteriorate. The most serious point is that the measurement technologies as the base for the improvement of R&D, product quality, and process yield have not gained the international competitive edge, even worse, the analysis devices, used to enjoy the competitive edge, are losing the power in the world market.

The "High Throughput Cutting-Edge Measurement for "Monozukuri" Innovation" is aiming at establishing the system concept for advancing and speeding up the measurement technologies indispensable for the reinforcement of the world competitiveness in R&D and "monozukuri", and aiming at developing and integrating the elemental technologies to realize the concept.

Based on the concept incorporating the advancement of the latest electronics, IT, and robotics, a high-throughput measurement system superior in size, operability, high-speed, and reliability must be designed, and developed in order to prevail in the R&D and "monozukuri" sites and to obtain standardization. Specific R&D assignments are as follows:

1) Construction of high-throughput technology concept and search for breakthrough technology
- Clarification of detailed system concept aiming at speeding up the "monozukuri" time ? 100 times or more ? centering on the new material, raw material, and device development through the revolution of measurement time and time factor, as well as the clarification of technological composition and significant integration fields
- Presentation of high-throughput measurement elemental technology containing innovation and feasibility

2) Microminiaturization of measurement devices
- Utilization of cutting-edge machining technology for microminiaturization such as MEMS, and NEMS
- Development of a system based on the new physics and chemical principle for microminiaturization
- Application development for "monozukuri" site and portable measurement machine reflecting the microminiaturization

3) Measurement of ultrahigh speed
- Development of breakthrough technology for ultrahigh-speed measurement including high sensitivity and high luminance
- Development of high-speed adjustment and scanning measuring technology of measurement sample
- Development of multipoint (multi-channel) simultaneous measuring technology based on multi-probe, multi-beam, and so on

4) Hybrid measurement
- Development of synthesis and analysis direct coupled measurement system integrating samples and sensor array

5) Compound (structure and physical properties) measurement
- Development of simultaneous measurement system of layered structure from nano to macro in size
- Development of compound measurement technology of various physical properties
- Inspection technology for the quality control, safety, and credibility at shop floor (or simulated environment)

6) Informatics of measurement information
- Development of information processing technology and international standardization composed of massive data high speed processing, visualization, database, and data mining of the high throughput measurement