Concept of Operations

One of the most prevalent requirements of manufacturing industries today is the need to exchange and share product information within and between enterprises. This becomes almost impossible without a standardized, computer-interpretable method of representing and communicating the data. STEP provides a common way of defining product data, so it can be easily interpreted and used by application processors throughout the life cycle of the product. STEP is suitable for the standardized exchange of product data through files, as well as the sharing and archiving of product data in databases. Since the area of application of the STEP standard is so broad, it is issued in sections, called Parts. The Parts known as Application Protocols (APs) define the information requirements for exchange in a designated application area, based on: the type of product, the supported stages in the life cycle of the product, the disciplines that create and use the product data, the required types of product data.