Technologies like 3-D printing, robotics, advanced motion controls and new methods for continuous manufacturing hold great potential for improving how companies design and build products to better serve customers. But if the past is any indicator, many established firms will be slow to adjust because of a formidable obstacle: legacy assets and capabilities that they are reluctant to abandon.

Across industries, we have left the big buildings, facilities and industrial parks and gone remote. All those remote operations, dispersed businesses and mobile and autonomous equipment need to be serviced. Thus, the service provider has to go to those remote locales. However, just as their customers have changed, the business of service has also changed. The service provider can also leverage technology to monitor, diagnose, and sometimes repair remotely.

When we talk about the Internet of Things, most people think about the flood of wearables and connected devices that will be put into the hands of the consumers. This same trend, though, has the potential to transform, in good ways, supply chain management.

Enterprises are increasingly adopting asset-management systems that record location data from more vantage points, and with greater precision, to be analyzed and visualized, says Randy Rhodes, a Gartner analyst.

Lack of planning and tracking of inventory, poor communications among company divisions, and underutilized or non-existent technology are among the core elements holding back manufacturers, educational and medical institutions, life sciences companies, food processors, automotive makers and facility maintenance companies from achieving world-class MRO operations, according to a recent survey completed by Storeroom Solutions Inc.

There's an episode of The Office TV show involving a prank on a hapless colleague in which the victim's desk contents - his stapler, pencil cup, plate, even his wallet-are stashed inside the office vending machine. It does not occur to any of the sitcom's characters to turn these hijinks into a business model, but now someone has.