Walk the floor of almost any beef or pork plant in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas or Minnesota and you will hear Spanish, Somali, Burmese, Karen, Tigrinya, Haitian Creole and a dozen other languages before you hear much English. That diversity is a strength. It is also one of the biggest safety and retention challenges...
Safety is the first letter on every Safety, Quality, Delivery, and Cost (SQDC) board in your plant, and for many Massachusetts manufacturers, one of its least-examined root causes is language. When an operator can't fully read a lockout procedure, a chemical label, or the updated standard work posted at the cell, the gap...
Limited English proficiency on the production line does not stay in the break room. It shows up in your defect data, your scrap bins, and your cost of poor quality (COPQ). When operators cannot accurately read work instructions, follow standardized work, or report deviations in real time, you get higher defect rates, more...
Massachusetts treats English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) as a formal priority within its workforce development grants, and the numbers explain why. A MassINC and UMass Donahue Institute report found that about 480,000 working-age residents have limited English proficiency, roughly one in 10 members of the state's workforce. Research presented by the...