Most manufacturers are one phishing email away from a multi-day production shutdown.
Change Management: Lessons from Leaders Who’ ve Lived It
Andrew Geiser from Rea moderated a panel that attendees cited as the event highlight, bringing together three manufacturing leaders who’ ve navigated significant growth and transformation: Clayton Newman from Stirling Ultracold, Randy Kitzmiller( retired from Ventrac), and Julian Coblentz from Walnut Creek Foods.
Key provisions: Bonus depreciation restored to 100 %, Section 179 raised to a $ 2.5 million limit, R & D expensing restored, and a new Qualified Production Property provision that could potentially allow for immediate facility expensing.
Manufacturers should reassess 2025-2026 capital plans immediately. Accelerating equipment purchases or facility construction started before year-end could generate six or seven-figure tax savings. Waiting until 2026 leaves money on the table.
Cybersecurity: The IT and OT Gap
Travis Strong from Rea Information Services explained why manufacturers face 25 % of global cyberattacks despite representing a much smaller portion of the economy. The core issue: IT environments operate on 3-5 year lifecycles with regular patching, while Operational Technology on the shop floor runs on 15-30 year lifecycles where patching requires production shutdowns.
Modern connectivity bridged these networks, but security collaboration lagged behind. The result: a ransomware attack starting in office systems can shut down production lines because IT and operations teams aren’ t coordinating security.
An audience poll revealed 50 % of attendees are only“ somewhat confident” they could detect an active attack.
Clayton Newman presented a five-element change model: Vision, Incentive, Action Plan, Skills, Resources. Missing any single element causes failure. The framework resonated because it came from someone who’ s actually implemented major organizational changes, not a consultant selling a methodology.
The panel’ s consensus: most change initiatives fail because leaders skip the“ why” and rush to implementation without building skills or allocating resources. Fast-growing manufacturers must be willing to make hard people decisions— employees who’ ve been outgrown by the company’ s evolution become bottlenecks.
Julian Coblentz shared practical communication tactics he uses at Walnut Creek Foods, including weekly CEO emails to all staff and skip-level lunches with mid-level managers. Randy Kitzmiller emphasized that culture creates positive peer pressure, but change must be paced to system capacity.
These weren’ t theoretical frameworks— they were battletested approaches from leaders who’ ve built and scaled manufacturing organizations through periods of rapid change.
Global Economic Context: Uneven Growth Ahead
Michael Weidokal from International Strategic Analysis provided the macro perspective. While the global economy has recovered to pre-COVID growth rates around 3.5 % annually, growth is unevenly distributed and primarily driven by the United States, concentrated in AI, tech, and healthcare sectors.
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