The Merrimack Valley helped invent American manufacturing. The mills of Lowell, Lawrence and Haverhill drew workers from around the world in the 1800s, and that story never really stopped. Today, the region's precision machining shops, medical device makers, food producers, plastics molders and electronics assemblers still depend on an immigrant workforce, now largely...
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...