Agile Software Corporation, a supplier of product change collaboration solutions for the electronic supply chain, announced it has partnered with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in an initiative to establish standards for efficiently sharing printed circuit assembly (PCA) data between electronics manufacturers and their supply chain partners. As an industry partner in NIST’s Internet Commerce for Manufacturing (ICM) testbed project, Agile Software is providing its Agile Workplace engineering change management technology for use in creating an environment that demonstrates and validates the use of open systems and standards for efficiently sharing both technical and business data across organizations. NIST’s ICM initiative aims to create an easily replicable scenario for Internet-based electronic commerce spanning the complex supply chain common in today’s electronics industry. Part of Agile Software’s contribution to the NIST initiative is its XML-based technology, which is a key facility within the next generation Agile products. In making its XML specifications available to NIST, Agile is proposing its adoption as an industry standard for exchanging XML-based product information between electronics OEMs and their EMS providers. These documents include Build Packages, Engineering Change Orders (ECOs), Manufacturing Change Orders (MCOs), and bills of material (BOMs). XML is a platform-independent, Web-based language that lets users categorize and structure data to be transmitted over the Internet. www.agilesoft.com