A web of industry

Most of us know that the Web has revolutionised the selling of manufactured goods, thanks to the likes of eBay and Amazon, but it has also made dramatic changes in how things are made, too. The headlines tend to go to the likes of the 3D manufacturing companies, which allow you to upload a design for jewellery, toys, artworks or whatever and then have the finished one-off or short-run product shipped over. But behind the scenes, a host of otherwise straightforward manufacturers are using the Web in all sorts of innovative ways to improve communications between office and departments, to speed up the flow of information up and down the supply chain, or to make collaborative design feasible on a worldwide scale.