The commercial exploitation of emerging technologies is seen today as key to the future success of the manufacturing sector. This is a new kind of high value manufacturing, and it operates very differently from the traditional supply chain-based manufacturing model.
Today's high value manufacturing sector is a complex global system, with large numbers of different businesses each operating across a number of industrial sectors. These businesses interact with each other in highly complex and interlinked value chains, trading not just raw materials and components, but also data and services.
In this world, success depends on the number of successful connections and interactions a business can establish, and the connections in turn depend on "interoperability", or the ability to work to the same set of rules or within the same framework.
Standards are a key tool to surviving in a fast moving, highly complex 21st century global economy.