There's a rumor going around, centered in Germany, that we're now in our fourth Industrial Revolution.

Will a robot run my organization in 10 years? Maybe, even though a chief executive's job, which requires a fair amount of problem-solving and creativity, is probably less susceptible to automation than middle-skill jobs such as machining and bookkeeping. At the same time, new research shows that most jobs have some proportion of tasks that can be substituted by workplace automation. Including a CEO's job.

As an industry, manufacturing is "hot." Regions are creating manufacturing initiatives, countries are creating policies to lure manufacturing back and prepare the next generation of talent, maker fairs show entrepreneurs and small-scale artisans how they too can design and manufacture their own products, what manufacturers sell goes well beyond the 100-year-old recipe and the mechanical drawings, and new technologies are changing the economies of scale so that large- and small-scale value chains can be successful.

While there has been much talk over the past 10 years or so about "collaboration," much of it has been focused on external supply chain collaboration. It seems that many companies neglected to get their own houses in order before looking outside their own supply chains, according to a University of Tennessee report entitled Bending the Chain: The Surprising Challenge of Integrating Purchasing and Logistics.

With the supply chain industry suffering from a lack of available talent for management positions, U.S. companies are stepping up efforts to recruit qualified and skilled professionals for those roles.

Harnessing data is crucial: Two-thirds of companies participating in a 2012 MIT Sloan survey said using analytics gave them a competitive edge. Most factories could use the boost.