This standard specifies conceptual interface content exchanged between manufacturing control functions and other enterprise functions. The interface considered is between Level 3 manufacturing systems and Level 4 business systems in the hierarchical model defined in Part 1 of this standard. The goal is to reduce the risk, cost, and errors associated with implementing the interface.

Since this standard covers many domains and there are many different standards for those domains, the semantics of this standard are described at a level intended to enable the other standards to be mapped to these semantics. To this end, this standard defines a set of elements contained in the conceptual interface, together with a mechanism for extending the interface content for implementations.

The scope of this standard is limited to the definition of object models and attributes of the exchanged information defined in the Part 1 standard.