Made in Group members from the Midlands, Yorkshire and the South West came together for our latest National Online Industry Meetup, a format designed to deliver practical insight in short best-practice talks, followed by smaller peer roundtables where members can discuss shared challenges and compare notes in a trusted setting. This blend of “learn + discuss + act” is exactly why the meetups work: they turn ideas into momentum, not just inspiration.
1) Cyber: treat it like fire risk, not an IT task
Our first speaker, A Cyber Protect Officer, West Yorkshire Police, delivered a clear message: cybercrime is no longer a distant technical issue, it’s an operational risk that can stop production, disrupt supply chains, and damage reputation fast.
Emma highlighted ransomware as the most severe and widespread threat because it targets businesses that can’t tolerate downtime. She also tackled the uncomfortable truth behind why many firms don’t act early enough: optimism bias (“why would they pick us?”), competing priorities, and the tendency to delegate cyber to IT rather than treating it as a board-level resilience issue.
Her practical takeaways were refreshingly direct:
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Train people (because most breaches start with human error)
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Secure and update systems
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Configure securely and remove unnecessary features
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Strengthen access controls
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Protect the supply chain
The thread running through it all: prepare for recovery as much as prevention, because speed of recovery is often what decides whether a disruption becomes a crisis.
2) Operational resilience: stop “survival work” becoming the operating model
Next up, Laura Hayton (Head of Business Development, Transicon) spoke to a reality most plants recognise instantly: many sites aren’t “broken”… they’re coping, running ageing control systems, under-staffed engineering teams, increasing compliance pressure, and growing cyber risk all at once.
Laura explained how resilience quietly erodes:
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Risk becomes invisible (nothing fails dramatically… until it does)
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Change feels dangerous (not changing feels safer than being “the one” who causes disruption)
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Confidence declines (teams stop believing improvements are possible without pain)
Her example of a legacy PLC losing production-state data after a power loss landed hard: same plant, same process, but resilience measured in minutes vs days. The good news: the path forward doesn’t require a massive shutdown. The best results come from:
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making risk visible (what’s unsupported / undocumented / no spares)
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reducing risk in small increments
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building a roadmap, not a one-off project
3) People & skills: belief comes before capability
Finally, Matt Fletcher (MD, Fletcher Moorland) brought the room back to fundamentals: the future of manufacturing depends on people, and the pipeline starts with belief.
Matt’s story of giving a 16-year-old a first toolkit evolved into #GetTooledUp, a wider initiative that has now put tools (and confidence) into hundreds of young engineers’ hands. His point wasn’t sentimental — it was strategic: capability follows belonging, and retention improves when people feel invested in early. The shift in language mattered too: you don’t “start at the bottom”, you start at your beginning.
A light touch update: event credits
Jason Pitt, Made in Group also shared a brief overview of the new event credit system designed to make participation fairer and easier to manage across the calendar, while keeping these National Meetups accessible. The key message for members: these bite-sized learning meetups don’t use member credits, so they remain a simple, high-value way to stay connected and keep learning.
Call to action
If you’re a member, log in via your dashboard and add yourself to one of the upcoming events, places can move quickly once invitations land, especially for factory tours.
If you’re not yet a member and want to learn more, reach out to the team and we’ll show you how the platform, publishing tools and event calendar fit together to build visibility and relationships over time.