For years, manufacturers have used technology to increase productivity and improve customer service. Today, they face new challenges: user demands for a wider range of products are forcing manufacturers to innovate faster and develop greater intimacy with end customers, and shifts in the global economy have created formidable new competitors and huge new markets in emerging countries. Companies are rethinking the way they operate—from getting the most productivity from the assets in their own backyard, to working in new ways that include the adoption of next-generation technologies, to collaborating with competitors in an effort to reallocate resources.