Analyst Insight: Best-in-class organizations are tapping into the power of analytics to improve supply-chain performance and identify improvement opportunities. Organizations use analytics for scoring models for vendor performance, detailed demand forecasting, and safety stock recommendations, optimizing fulfillment logistics, creating predictive models of different failure conditions, inventory budget optimization, and many other supply-chain activities. Today’s complex supply chains require that leaders create a data-driven culture, both internally and externally with supply-chain partners. – Andrea Stroud, statistician, APQC

Analyst Insight: We have come a long way from the days where gut feel and years of industry knowledge ruled the day and drove critical decision-making. "Water Cooler Talk" seems a thing of the past, but to effectively work together, businesses must replace it with a new process. Face to face cross-functional team discussions are critical in helping teams learn to work together and communicate effectively. Welcome to sales and operations planning (S&OP). – M. Scott Moon, principal, Tompkins International

Analyst Insight: With companies reshoring their manufacturing facilities back to North America in today's market and in the future, leading industrial manufacturing companies are striving to enhance factory performance and improve plant productivity to maintain a competitive edge. Industrial manufacturing is in the midst of a technological renaissance that is transforming the systems and processes of the modern plant. Companies can't afford to ignore these advances or they will be left behind. – Brian Neuwirth, VP of Marketing and Sales, UNEX Manufacturing

Analyst Insight: The Internet of Things (IoT) was originally the concept of "things talking." In the early days we envisioned RFID tags on everything, helping to identify and locate any object in the universe. The RFID tag would uniquely identify the item, determine its location, and put a time stamp to the transaction. It was a straightforward concept. It was either there, or it was not. It was all about identity and location. – Eric Peters, executive vice president, Tompkins International

Analyst Insight: When people talk about the Internet of Things, they can mean many different things, even within one industry. For a manufacturer, there are four major areas where IoT may have an impact: the manufacturing plant, the supply chain, service and the product. – Bill McBeath, chief research officer, ChainLink Research