By Jack Parmer, Flojoy CEO

Test, measurement, & control

T&M industry overview

The global test & measurement (T&M) industry is sized at around $30B. It is expected to reach $40B by 2030. One notable data point from this growth is the recent $8.2B cash acquisition of T&M leader National Instruments by Emerson.

Test, measurement, & control (TMC or T&M) underpins every research and engineering endeavor in the world. To illustrate, here are a few examples:

• Semiconductors: when a printed circuit board or chip undergoes QA at a test bench, T&M software and hardware perform the test.
• Chemicals: When reagents are synthesized in a reactor, TMC hardware and software assess chemical properties like molecular weight, solubility, LogP, etc.
• Automotive: Every part that makes its way into an assembled car undergoes inspection with TMC software and hardware.
• Computer vision: TMC vendors provide microscopes, lenses, and cameras for most industrial imaging applications.
• Academia: when a researcher measures a material’s response to laser pulses, they are using TMC software and hardware to capture the measurements.

Naturally, TMC is largely unheard of outside of STEM. However, it underlies every high-volume, high-tech, manufacturing process and experimental science discovery.

For VCs more familiar with software engineering, an apt T&M analogy is unit testing and continuous integration (CI). Production software is never released without unit tests and CI. Analogously, production lines for high-tech products are never built without T&M automation at each step.