Manufacturing interoperability

Abstract

As manufacturing and commerce become ever more global in nature, companies are increasingly dependent upon the efficient and effective exchange of information with their partners, wherever they may be. Leading manufacturers rely upon computers to perform this information exchange, which must therefore be encoded for electronic transmission. Because no single company can dictate that all its partners use the same software, standards for how the information is represented become critical for cost-effective, error-free transmission of data. This paper discusses some interoperability issues related to current standards, and describes two projects underway at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the areas of interoperability testing, and in self-integration research. We believe that tomorrow's standards will rely heavily upon the use of formal logic representations, and that these will enable automation of many integration tasks.