The image shows the different domains involved in the lifecycle of a product, and the existing STEP standards for each domain.

Some of these standards (blue and orange) cover the technical content of the modelling and simulation, and it is the intention that this data will continue to be exchanged using these standards (e.g. AP209, AP210, AP242, FMI).

Other standards (AP233 - green and AP239 - cyan) are concerned with the systems engineering and lifecycle, providing traceability to the systems engineering and product data management [PDM] context which can be summarized as “who”, “what”, “where”, “when”, “how”, “why”. These have been used sucessfully for data exchange several years, but are inefficient when used for data sharing using web services due to the large number of objects needed to represent a business concept. 

The intention of MoSSEC is to combine the objects of AP233/239 into higher level business objects that can be used for efficient data sharing with web services. This will be achieved using the STEP Future Architecture (see Public site or Private site or ASD SSG page)

 The image (source) provides an overview of the content and overlap of the different STEP standards.

The areas bordered by the MoSSEC jigsaw cover the systems engineering and product data management [PDM] context data targeted by the MoSSEC Business objects.

The areas indicated by the jigsaw arrows are the expected modelling and simulation data for which the context data will be provided, but modelling and simulation data itself will continue to be exchanged using the technical standards and will be treated by MoSSEC as "black boxes".