Abstract
Measurement precision is in general determined by the instrument performance, the environmental conditions, and last but not least by economical considerations (measuring time, workload etc.). The influence of all three parameters which as of today limits the overall precision of industrial measurements can be drastically reduced by the aid of computers. Their data handling capabilities in terms of speed, capacity, and numerical data analysis allow to either increase the number of measurements and/or to evaluate the measurement data more thoroughly. In both cases the measurement precision will be increased beyond the instrument capabilities in conventional terms. The constraints of the environmental and the economical conditions can be overcome by increasing the speed of the measurement. Examples will be given for opto-electronic measurement principles applied to measurement tasks in integrated circuit manufacturing.