I grew up in a small manufacturing company where nine different languages were spoken. English was the language of managers, office workers, and some of our production employees. Additionally, these languages were spoken in our factory: Armenian, Laotian, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Italian, Creole, French, and Spanish. We were a melting pot, rich with different cultures, but without a common language. The factory was a veritable Tower of Babel.

If workers had ideas or were struggling with a problem, the language barrier held them back. Talented workers were yoked to simple repetitive tasks, limited by their inability to communicate. This was frustrating for employees and managers, and completely at odds with our continuous improvement aspirations. In 1987, my company made a critical investment to teach English as a second language, (ESL) to non-English-speaking employees. In an ironic twist, we took advantage of the ESL classes to teach TPS concepts, which contained many Japanese words like kaizen or poka-yoke. Students were learning English and TPS at the same time.

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