As we speak, fundamental shifts in manufacturing are taking place.

Some trends in technology are obvious and have been discussed threadbare, such as the impact of cloud. Similarly, some business trends have been analyzed frequently enough -- such as the globalization of the supply chain and its impact on procurement.

So, we'll take a closer look at some other key factors that are shaping on how manufacturers in high-tech, discrete, auto-aero and agri products are reshaping the products they build, how they use technology, interact with their customers or run their business operations.

Some of these are technologies, while others are sub-industry and functional focus areas, that have broad impact.

Virtual Operations

"Telepresence isn't just for video conferencing between participants in meeting rooms. Immersive collaboration is also practical and cost-effective within manufacturing and engineering environments."

Immersive collaboration technologies such as tele-presence, desktop sharing, Intelligent Voice Recognition (IVR) have been around for a while. The transformation that customers are asking for is to leverage these to give a same-room effect for operations -- especially operations that require global interactions. For example, bringing together a customer's problem desktop, Salesforce Remedy, level1-support, level2-support and a developer into a single virtual operations center that allows them to solve product problems in a snap is beginning to change how products get fixed, changed and customer issues resolved.

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