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September 21, 2026
GREEN BAY – With greater connectivity comes the need for greater protection.
As the positive impacts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution – also referred to as Industry 4.0 – make their way across Northeast Wisconsin’s factory floors, Scott Janssen said manufacturers must proactively mitigate cybersecurity risks.
In addition to his professional role as major accounts and Sheboygan office team lead at James Imaging Systems, Janssen said he serves as chairperson of the Northeast Wisconsin Manufacturing Alliance (NEWMA) and its Industry 4.0 Task Force.
The next event in this task force’s ongoing educational series is “Cyber & Suds,” an informative networking session Janssen said focuses on preventing cyber events on the production floor.
“Cyber & Suds” is set to take place 1:30-3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 23 at the Black Sheep event center (3675 Algoma Road in New Franken).
The free-to-attend event, organizers said, will feature Ghostscale Director Thomas Freeman as a keynote speaker, as well as a panel featuring Jason Schwoerer (senior manager, IT operations & security at Lakeside Foods), Joe LaChapell (CTO at M2 Logistics) and Eric Cunningham (senior manager, IT operations & security at Country Visions Cooperative).
Touting “craft beer, real conversation and answers you can use Monday morning,” Janssen said this event invites local manufacturing industry members to tackle “an emerging topic in manufacturing” in a collaborative setting.
“It helps them start a conversation and gives them some resources – or maybe some people to call to get some resources from – to start the conversation to help,” he said. “The more we can share information, the faster we can strengthen our production force, because none of us obviously gain if all of a sudden we can’t produce items.”
The “Suds” component, Janssen said, signifies the event’s social side.
“We want people in the room to hang out, have a beer and to say, ‘Oh, well, I’m doing something like that,’ and to then be able to connect afterwards,” he said.
Rewards, risks of Industry 4.0
IBM equates Industry 4.0 to “smart manufacturing,” and “the digital transformation of the field, delivering real-time decision making, enhanced productivity, flexibility and agility to revolutionize the way companies manufacture, improve and distribute their products.”
Janssen said the key word is “connectivity,” where everything from programmable logic controllers to human-machine interfaces, sensors, printers and cameras can be programmed to work in concert and drive efficiency.
“It’s really understanding that the modern-day factory floor is its own computer network,” he said.
At its best, Janssen said Industry 4.0 helps manufacturers to better utilize both new and existing technologies.
“[Smart manufacturing can help] make decisions in production, or maybe it [helps] in watching different metrics [manufacturers] are getting back from the devices,” he said. “[For some], it might be able to proactively do a preventative fix on the device before it broke down, or sometimes, as AI would gather the data, they’d learn, ‘Well, this is an issue; when you see this [alert], this [issue] is coming next.’”
The risk of such advanced connectivity, Janssen said, is hackers’ technology and methods have likewise evolved.
When a factory floor’s components are all linked, he said it can lead to overlooked openings which bad actors can exploit, enabling them to gain entry through one unprotected endpoint and access the rest of the network.
“Things like printers, USB ports – things like that are now hack targets,” he said.
Janssen said a single unpatched device in a manufacturer’s hardware can lead to a breach, with the infiltration causing a costly shutdown of productivity.
Cyber & Suds
Due to the speed of these technological advancements, Janssen said concerns are often discussed privately, as companies are afraid to admit they’re unsure if their cybersecurity is adequately hardened.
“It’s not an area where people have had a lot of focus,” he said, “and what they’re really finding out is they have to be more focused.”
With “Cyber & Suds,” he said the goal is to make these conversations more comfortable among manufacturers, since so many of them are facing similar threats.
From updates to firmware and security settings to seeking cyber insurance to protect against ransomware attacks, data breaches and other damaging incidents, Janssen said regional manufacturers should look to one another for advice on strategies, tools and “closing the gap.”
“Closing the gap is this idea of… getting more closely attuned with the cyber preventatives they’ve been doing on the network side, and now taking those same concepts and bringing them to the factory floor,” he said.
Janssen said he recommends attendance for three types of manufacturing professionals: people in production slash/operations, IT and anyone who owns or is on the executive leadership team of an organization.
He said the panelists represent high expertise across organizations of different sizes, allowing all manufacturers to glean relevant insights.
“Lakeside Foods is a very large company, Country Visions is that next tier below and then M2, they actually provide support to a lot of smaller companies,” he said, “so it gives a nice panel of all three different levels.”
Janssen said he anticipates discussion of what these companies have or have not tried and what has or has not worked for them, as well as panelists and attendees sharing resources and making connections.
“I really hope the people who come will come away with real-world information to go back to their organizations and explore, ‘Is this something we need to be doing a better job of?’” he said.
Registration is available through the day of the event, Janssen said, at newmfgalliance.org.
More on NEWMA
A free event like “Cyber & Suds,” Janssen said, offers an ideal glimpse into what regional manufacturers can gain from NEWMA.
“NEWMA is a partner to help manufacturers of all sizes navigate different challenges within the manufacturing space, and is really an advocate in the community to make our manufacturing presence known,” he said.
Janssen said the organization’s events are just as much about education as they are about networking, with a further goal “to help the people who are looking for jobs be able to better integrate in the systems.”
The next big NEWMA event, he said, is its annual Manufacturing First Expo & Conference, Oct. 28 at the Resch Center in Green Bay.
“That usually has a phenomenal keynote, and then the ability, again, to see what other manufacturers are doing and to be able to connect you with resources, people in the organizations and how they do things,” he said.
Between its quarterly meetings and events from other task forces – covering topics like safety, recruitment and technology – Janssen said NEWMA offers much for manufacturing’s hungry minds.
“The more you participate,” he said, “the more you get out of it.”
