By Karen Hanna

Serial entrepreneur Jeremy Jacobs has noticed an issue while visiting manufacturing shops around the country: A lot of companies’ systems aren’t talking to each other, or to their users.

With a diverse blend of languages and cultures, shop floors can sound like the United Nations, but important communications can break down like the Tower of Babel.

“Some of these people, and I won’t name names, they’ve been pencil-whipping this quality-control sheet three times a day, [but] they don’t even know what it says,” Jacobs said, recalling visits to plants that provide communications for sign-off in languages other than what workers spoke. “I saw that problem, and then I started to realize, as I’ve talked to these folks, I’m like, ‘How do you get these workers prepared to be productive and safe?’ ”

Over the past 20 years, Jacobs has built technology companies helping manufacturers manage digital signage, as well as visitor, text messaging and contractor communications. All the platforms faced one common challenge: providing communications in a way that was intelligible to people who don’t all speak the same language. Out of that experience, he founded UnDesked, a software platform that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to translate manufacturers’ documentation.

Solving the language barrier on the shop floor

“There’s an enormous opportunity for America to capture manufacturing, but there’s also an enormous amount of workforce pressure. And so what we started to see, as we were really analyzing this problem — because we’re out there on the front line — is there’s a lot of languages everywhere,” Jacobs said.

He said many shops provide English-as-a-second-language (ESL) classes to workers, but their plant floor needs often take priority over true language proficiency.

Manufacturing managers, Jacobs said, have told him, “ ‘Well, you know, we put them through this ESL program until we think they’re good enough to go to the floor.’ And I met some of these people, and ... I’m not sure we agree on what’s good enough to go to the floor.”

With UnDesked, companies can instantaneously translate and upload important documents, such as standard operating protocols and procedures, into a single program that’s accessible to any designated employee anywhere on the plant floor, through its compatibility with machine HMIs and tablets.

Gathering information in one accessible platform

The software also can be accessed through self-service touch-screen hubs, and it brings together information for production floors, training rooms, break rooms, warehouses, contractors and shipping and receiving areas. Through custom APIs, it can interface with company-specific software, providing a one-stop shop.

It also streamlines digital signage throughout the plant.

It uses multiple AI translation programs to make electronic documents available in any language that’s selected, so, for example, a machine operator might choose to access and fill out a Spanish-language incident report, and once it’s submitted, the manager might click a button to read it in English.

The software can be programmed to provide notifications to specified parties when appropriate, such as when an employee completes a form related to a maintenance need.

Faster, safer, more efficient

According to UnDesked, users have reported faster maintenance response times, onboarding and hazard reporting; increased employee engagement; greater operational efficiency; reduced turnover; an increase in near-miss incident reporting and fewer accidents.

“It starts at onboarding,” Jacobs said, “and then it goes into training, and then it goes into incident reporting. These things need to be in their language. ...

You take what was a several-month to several-year cycle of trying to teach them English, and they’re instantaneously productive and safe, like literally on Day 1. And so in a break room, you might have shift-off requests, or shift swaps, or company picnic signups ... whatever the soft side of the business is.”

Among other benefits, the consolidation of so much information into one software program helps ease an annoyance caused by a common pet peeve — managing an encyclopedic array of passwords.

“We hear from people that on a lot of these things, they felt overwhelmed. If you think about all the things our software does — texting, digital signage, visitor management, contractor management, management workflow, safety forms, maintenance forms, any kind of form — you start to realize the ecosystem they used to work in was about 10 or 20 different pieces of software, none of which connected to each other, none of which talk to each other,” Jacobs said.

In some cases, UnDesked’s capabilities have a slight overlap with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, though Jacobs said the software isn’t designed to interact with software that handles certain major categories of a manufacturer’s business, such as payroll, or inventory or customer management.

According to Jacobs, the company’s clients generally employ 50 people or more, with most clients in the over-150 range.

More help for employers hiring refugees

Based in Bowling Green, Ky., where foreign-born residents make up 15 percent of the population, compared to the national average of 14.1 percent, UnDesked powers a website, https://thelanguagegap.com/, that provides information pertinent to companies interested in hiring refugees. Jacobs also works with workforce boards on the issues.

As UnDesked’s Language Gap website says, “The workers are there. The jobs are waiting. Our AI is ready.”

Referencing a Deloitte and Manufacturing Institute projection that manufacturers will need 3.8 million employees in the next decade, Jacobs said foreign-born workers are essential to filling manufacturing’s labor needs.
No matter their language or background, he said he has seen them get the job done.

“If it’s not going to be limited English proficiency (LEP) workers that fill these 3.8 million jobs that we’re going to have to fill by 2033, I’m all ears on your argument as to who it’s going to be,” he said.