The Interoperability Testbed's objective is to develop an open, on-going initiative to enhance the capability for on-demand interoperability demonstration and testing for use by numerous stakeholders: software vendors, manufacturing organizations (i.e., customers), standards organizations, and government.

The Manufacturing Systems Integration Division at NIST has initiated the NIST Manufacturing B2B Interoperability Testbed to address the needs for demonstration and testing of B2B standards in a persistent environment that provides reusability, accumulation of organizational knowledge and lessons learned, coordination, and cost-sharing among the participants. The testbed is an on-going effort to mobilize software vendors, manufacturers, standards organizations, and other stake-holding parties to enhance the capability for on-demand demonstration and testing of interoperability of enterprise applications in a B2B setting.