1. Research and innovation Research and innovation 1 STEPMAN The project Development of a STEP and STEP-NC standard based integrated product lifecycle management solution to increase the competitiveness of European machine tool manufacturing SMEs www.stepman.eu Contract: 286962 Started: 2011.11.01 Duration: 39 months Status: on-going The project is co-funded by the European Commission through the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) through the funding scheme “Research for the Benefit of SME-s” under Grant Agreement No.286962

2. Research and innovation Research and innovation STEPMAN The vision Total interoperability in the CAx Network 2

3. Research and innovation Research and innovation 3 The novelty of the STEPMAN project lies in the integration of comprehensive machine capability profiles and cutting tool dictionaries that are seamlessly interfaced with product manufacturing process models. This is achieved by using advanced standard data models (based on STEP-NC ISO14649) within a new multi-tier architecture that describes the manufacturing process with great detail within a rich semantic framework. For the first time, this would bring the benefits of the emerging new standards such as STEP-NC to SMEs without requiring new hardware. STEPMAN The innovation