Hanjin Newport Co., a division of Hanjin Shipping, is using an ultrahigh-frequency RFID solution to help manage its 20 percent growth in traffic this year at its deep-water terminal in the city of Busan, South Korea.

The manufacturing CIO has long been associated with managing new technology implementation, strategic IT planning and keeping tabs on the latest solutions that could boost productivity. The job entails much more than that today.

New market opportunities are available to companies in almost every industry from the data that IoT delivers. These new opportunities could be as simple as getting information from sensors about what is happening on the manufacturing plant floor causing automatic manufacturing updates, potential adjustment to customer order delivery dates or even a maintenance work request to handle a detected equipment malfunction. All of these opportunities cause changes to be made to the supply chain.

An old killer app rides again. Radio frequency identification will become a key component of the Internet of Things because it bridges the physical and digital worlds, enabling the identification of objects and linking them to the internet.

During the recent opening of Auburn University's RFID Lab, Amazon announced a joint project with the school to explore the business case for the implementation of RFID within the Amazon supply chain.