Interoperation

In engineering, interoperation is the setup of ad hoc components and methods to make two or more systems work together as a combined system with some partial functionality during a certain time, possibly requiring human supervision to perform necessary adjustments and corrections.

This contrasts to interoperability, which theoretically permits any number of systems compliant to a given standard to work together a long time smoothly and unattended as a combined system with the full functionality by the standard.

Another definition of interoperation: "services effectively combining multiple resources and domains...; requires interoperability".