The intent of this standard is to establish the governing semantics and an XML based syntax for shop floor communication between electronic assembly equipment and associated software applications. Wherever possible, existing and widely accepted protocols have been utilized. Certain guaranteed behaviors have been defined to ensure that mission-critical data is reliably communicated among Clients. The purpose of this specification is to outline the communication architecture and supporting XML messages. The required programmatic actions that define the choreography between sender and receiver have also been defined. The domain of this standard is that of an electronics assembly manufacturing shop, consisting of up to several hundred machines, each of which is capable of producing tens of messages per second. Most of these messages are relatively small in size (under 20 kilobytes); however some application-specific files of several megabytes will occasionally need to be transferred. The number of consumers of this information is assumed to be a relatively small number, typically less than 20, and this number does not directly increase in proportion to the number of machines. Provisions have also been made to accommodate network interruptions.