JT has become a widely used standard format for product visualization in the industry. The prostep ivip Association and the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) are driving this adoption with three connected projects focusing on both users and vendors communities with:

From the start, these projects have continuously developed JT recommendations and implementation guidelines; performed benchmarks, documented requirements and discussed issues.

In August 2010, the prostep ivip Association submitted a JT specification to ISO for standardization. ISO published it as ISO 14306 international standard in December 2012.

In June 2016 prostep ivip released the «JT Industrial Application Package» version 2 (PSI 14/JT IAP v2): An enhanced specification of JT, combining guidelines and latest use case requirements. This PSI recommendation is compatible with the JT ISO standard released in 2012 and provides latest capabilities of the file format. It was also released as DIN Spec 91383 in 2018.

As the latest in a row of eight benchmarks, this JT Application Benchmark was carried out in 2018 to achieve an independent evaluation of the progress being made concerning the development of JT translators and viewing applications. The object of testing was the PSI 14/DIN Spec 91383 JT specification. Additionally, the interoperability between JT and the STEP AP242 Business Object (BO) Model XML schema (published as ISO Standard ISO 10303-242:2014) was also part of the benchmark.

The benchmark was managed by the JT Workflow Forum and JT Implementor Forum. Because the benchmark is an independent activity, it was financed directly by the two organizations, the prostep ivip Association and the VDA, and not by the participating companies, whose products were tested. It is a neutral test of trendsetting JT applications against selected criteria. Therefore, the results of the benchmark cannot only be used to evaluate the application of JT in PLM environments, but also for improvement of the interoperability of the applications. As such applications are undergoing a permanent development; the benchmark can only give a snapshot of the functions and qualities of the applications.