407- The Day IT and OT Finally Talked w/Bill Markut

You've Been Heard

Philip Howard

Tech News, Technology, Business, Management, News

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🗓️ 18 March 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bill Markut, IT Director at Gränges Americas, built a five-year roadmap to transform manufacturing IT. From the Department of No to the Department of No, But. And why AI won't fix a decade of infrastructure neglect. Bill Markut spent 36 years avoiding management, preferring hands-on technical work. Then he became IT Director at a manufacturing company running 25 years behind the tech curve and discovered something that changed everything: the power of getting IT and OT to actually talk to each other. Key takeaways: Manufacturing IT runs 20-25 years behind the technology curve. That gap is the opportunity.; The event storm exercise gets IT and OT in one room. That is where silos actually break.; Hire for initiative, not just technical skill. Addition by subtraction is real.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everybody.
0:10.5	Welcome to You've Been Heard, the technology podcast, and today we've got Bill
0:15.3	Market.
0:16.5	So, Bill, do me a favor and tell us a little about your journey and your story and how you've been heard.
0:23.8	Well, I'm going on 36 years in IT this spring, and I graduated from Milwaukee School of Engineering with a degree in computer science and a degree in industrial management.
0:35.8	Worked 20 plus years in IT consulting in Wisconsin.
0:40.7	Moved to Tennessee about 12 years ago. And basically I've worked in a software engineering
0:47.7	role for most entirely my entire career, especially in the Microsoft side. There were some
0:53.7	years during the consulting
0:54.8	area that during Y2K and that I basically picked up all kinds of technologies, Lotus and
1:00.5	Lotus Notes and Domino and things like that just to keep yourself employed.
1:05.8	Oh, I remember that. Yeah, fun times. For about four years ago, I was a senior engineer on an MES project here at
1:15.4	Grangus. We deployed a PSI metal solution in our biggest plant in Western Tennessee. And afterwards,
1:24.6	the president of the company asked me if I wanted to take over the development area of Grangus.
1:30.1	And I've always purposely stayed out of management because I really like to be in hands-on technical.
1:35.7	I like to being able to solve problems and innovate new solutions and new technology and things like that.
1:42.1	But I also realized that I'm in my 50s and I really didn't want to train new managers.
1:49.9	So I took the role and worked in that role for a couple years.
1:54.5	I had a really good development team.
1:56.6	About two years ago, there was some reorganization in our group, and I was offered the opportunity to take the
2:04.1	directorship role. And I did, again, begrudgingly, didn't really want to move up into an area that I really
2:12.5	didn't know a whole lot about, meaning cybersecurity and infrastructure and networking and things like that. But being a
	...

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