The OCX-IF is a three-party relationship between the Implementor Group, the User Group and the Standards Community:

1. A User Group representing the end users
2. An Implementor  Group consisting of companies developing SW support for the OCX standard (CAD vendors, classification societies or PLM consultants)
3. The Standards Community = OCX Consortium Full Members

OCX-IF User Group

The User Group consists of maritime industry end-users (typically designers and shipyards) who define and prioritise industry requirements, test cases and acceptance criteria for OCX capabilities in the scope of the standard. 

Objectives of the OCX-IF user group are:

• Manage industry requirements for interoperability.
• Convey capability gaps to standards bodies
• Create & maintain common industry Use Cases and associated Test Cases
• Prioritise a list of Use Cases for test rounds by the Implementer Group
• Allocate industry requirements to interoperability validation & verification with KPIs
• Review the scope of the OCX Recommended Practices with industry needs
• Create user best practices for OCX exchange
• Communicate to the outside world
  • Conferences, Show Cases etc.
  • Present pilots (showcase, etc.)
  • Promote results and usage of the OCX-IF

OCX-IF Implementor Group

The main deliverable of the OCX Implementor Group is interoperable OCX software products. This is enabled by harmonised implementation guidelines for the OCX standard, the so-called Recommended Practices.

The Recommended Practice documents:

• harmonised  approaches for realising specific capabilities in the OCX standard, based on users’ requirements
• are the foundation for the consistency and interoperability of OCX interfaces
• provide comprehensive implementation guidelines with examples
• get validated in Implementor Group test rounds
• are publicly available on the OCX-IF homepage after successful testing and release.