If you're not in the communication business now, you soon will be. The Internet of Things (IoT) will see to that.

Hanjin Newport Co., a division of Hanjin Shipping, is using an ultrahigh-frequency RFID solution to help manage its 20 percent growth in traffic this year at its deep-water terminal in the city of Busan, South Korea.

The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) has brought with it increased focus on "connected products." As manufacturers work to retrofit existing products with connectivity and build it into new products, they are faced with the question of how these connected products will transform the after-sales services they provide, and possibly even their business models.

The manufacturing CIO has long been associated with managing new technology implementation, strategic IT planning and keeping tabs on the latest solutions that could boost productivity. The job entails much more than that today.

For the past seven years, Carlo K. Nizam has been the head of Airbus Group's Value Chain Visibility and RFID program. He has led the effort to use radio frequency identification, as well as what the company refers to as "Intranet of Things" technologies, to track aircraft parts, logistics containers, tools, jigs, subassemblies and other critical assets.

New market opportunities are available to companies in almost every industry from the data that IoT delivers. These new opportunities could be as simple as getting information from sensors about what is happening on the manufacturing plant floor causing automatic manufacturing updates, potential adjustment to customer order delivery dates or even a maintenance work request to handle a detected equipment malfunction. All of these opportunities cause changes to be made to the supply chain.

North America's expanding automatic identification industry picked up momentum with the grand opening celebration of SATO Global Solutions (SGS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tokyo-based SATO Holdings Corporation.