Richard Barnett, Fusion Risk Management

On this episode of Manufacturing Tomorrow, we sit down with Richard Barnett, Chief Marketing Officer at Fusion Risk Management, a leading provider of operational resilience software and services. Richard has spent more than a decade working directly with manufacturing and supply chain organizations as their risk exposure has shifted alongside increasingly digitally connected operations. The conversation centers on a counterintuitive finding from Fusion’s latest Enterprise Resilience Report: manufacturers report feeling more prepared for disruption than they did in 2021. On the surface, that looks like progress. Richard argues it may actually be a warning sign — because the threats manufacturers have built confidence around aren’t the ones now emerging on the plant floor. The discussion digs into where that confidence gap shows up in practice: AI-driven incidents that most resilience frameworks haven’t caught up to, the risks hiding in IT/OT convergence for plants running legacy systems, and resilience exposure that lives entirely outside a manufacturer’s own four walls — in SaaS platforms and supply chain partners they don’t control. Richard also traces the shift underway in how resilience is treated organizationally — from a compliance checkbox to a strategic capability with real leadership attention and budget behind it — and closes with concrete first steps for any plant manager or VP of Operations who suspects they’ve got gaps. Keywords: Operational Resilience, IT/OT Convergence, Manufacturing Risk Management, AI in Manufacturing