The focus on accountability and ensuring each workflow throughout a manufacturing operation is abiding by governance requirements is essential for protecting customer, company and supplier data. Too often manufacturers become too enamored with technology alone and forget to see the broader ethical and privacy implications of their decisions to invest in data-centric initiatives. The hard reality is that the more data-centric an initiative is the more oversight it requires to ensure ethicacy and clarity, and most of all to protect the data that is literally moving unprotected throughout production processes literally 24 hours a day. How Information Technology Affects an Organization's Strategic Position

The collection of nascent technologies mentioned by Columbus (et.al) in the recent Forbes article taken together act as accelerators across all five dimensions of the Porter Five Forces Model. Beginning with the Threat of Substitute Products, the advent of big data analytics has the potential to reduce production costs while increasing supply chain coordination, leading to a wider variety of substitute products for manufacturers. Taken throughout an industry value chain, this translates into the redefining of an entire industry. Analytics combined with the performance gains from production efficiencies also increases the bargaining power of suppliers, many of which will gain greater insight into how best to manage their own supply chains for greater competitiveness. The series of technologies mentioned by Columbus (et.al.) also have immediate implications on the synchronization of suppliers network-wide as well. Big data analytics is directly contributing to the development and launch of new market entrants today as well, and this applies across all manufacturing industries. Insights gained from big data analytics can also provide insights into how best to aggregate dissimilar components together and create entirely new solutions to complex problems. The fourth element, bargaining power of buyers, is also being accelerated by all the technologies mentioned in the article as well. Buyers are increasingly sophisticated...

This is occurring across all manufacturing industries today as the accumulated effects of these technologies continues to redefine the structure of industry value chains. The accumulated effect of these technologies on the four surrounding elements is ultimately seen from their effects on the intensity of rivalry across different industries. The level of rivalry and relative level of intensity is directly proportional to how fast a given industry's value chain is moving in the direction of commoditization. This is also predicated on how well each industry participant is adopting technology as an accelerator vs. detractor to their overall strategic growth. For many manufacturers, the collection of these technologies will mean they have entirely new levels of performance available yet at the price of increased ethics and privacy oversight.
Conclusion

Nascent technologies including big data analytics, mobile and robotics have the potential to completely reshape entire industries. Only by considering how each of these technologies can contribute to greater company performance while staying within ethical and privacy guidelines can a manufacturer attain performance gains while staying in ethical alignment to governance requirements. The implications of these technologies on accelerating the performance is clear; it is up to each manufacturer on how they manage the tradeoffs inherent in each. Only by creating an ethical oversight and governance program can any manufactures hope to contain the inherent risk of company, customer and supplier data being comprised. For these technologies to deliver the fully realizable value, these factors need to be taken into account.