The Hidden Cost of Communication Gaps in Manufacturing Operations

by Ajay Pratap Singh, Regional Director – South Asia, ETS (TOEIC)

India’s manufacturing sector is entering a strong growth phase, driven by investments under Production Linked Incentive schemes, semiconductors and clean-energy manufacturing. At the same time, plants are adopting more automation and connected systems. According to TeamLease Services’ Employment Outlook Report, net employment in the manufacturing, engineering and infrastructure sector is projected to grow by 6.6% in the first half of FY2026-27.

As plants bring technology and people together, communication is becoming an increasingly integral part of how work gets done. Every shift involves a constant exchange of instructions, handovers and information across teams. When these exchanges fall short, the impact rarely appears in the ledger as a ‘communication’ issue. Instead, it shows up as rework, unplanned downtime, missed schedules and near-misses. This makes communication a hidden operational cost; and one that is easy to underestimate.

Industry 5.0 Raises the Stakes
Manufacturing is moving towards the Industry 5.0 model, which the National Institute for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (NIMSME) describes as a combination of connected machines, human creativity and human intelligence. Where Industry 4.0 focused on automation and digital systems, this model brings people back to the centre of production, with technology handling repetitive data-heavy work and people contributing judgement, problem-solving and decision-making.

This makes communication a working requirement in plant operations. When a system flags a deviation on the production floor, people still have to decide what it means, whether to stop the line and whom to inform, usually together with maintenance, quality and production teams. A technician may also need to describe a fault clearly to an OEM’s remote support team emphasizing that technical skill prepares a worker for the task; communication determines how well it is carried out with others.

Where The Hidden Cost Shows Up
The cost appears in three areas. The first is safety. A FirstUp survey of 1,000 US factory workers found that 71% had faced production or safety issues because of miscommunication from a manager or senior leader, and 12% reported workplace injuries or near-misses. The finding comes from the US, but the pattern is not new.

The second is productivity and coordination. Unclear instructions and incomplete handover notes lead to rework, repeated clarifications and delayed dispatch. A specification change that is not passed on means the job gets done twice, and a shortage one department is not told about can stop a line. When information does not move cleanly between design, production, quality and procurement, decisions slow down.

Additionally, the shop floor has always brought together people from different states, contract workers, apprentices and engineers, often with different first languages. A message that sounds clear to one group can be understood differently by another, especially when it is given quickly or in a mix of languages. Because it seems to have been delivered, the gap goes unnoticed until it surfaces further down the line. This is what makes the cost hidden: nobody records the misunderstanding, only its results.

The third is workforce churn, and the link to communication is easy to miss. Shop-floor attrition in India’s automotive manufacturing is reported at 40–45%, against about 12.5% for the industry overall. Pay and career prospects play a part, but the first weeks on the job matter too. A new joiner who cannot follow an instruction, ask a question or raise a concern struggles to settle in, and employers absorb the cost twice: fresh hiring and onboarding spend for every early exit, and slower progress from those who stay.

Many of these costs can be traced back to the hiring stage. The TOEIC Global English Skills Report 2026, a survey of more than 1,300 HR decision-makers across 17 countries, found that 83% of employers say hiring candidates with insufficient English skills imposes real costs, including lower productivity and retention. Yet 68% say they have no reliable way to screen new hires for English proficiency. In manufacturing, English is the working language of equipment manuals, OEM support, supplier audits and calls with overseas teams. When it is not checked at hiring, supervisors and colleagues absorb the gap every day.

From Hidden Cost to Managed Capability
Action is already visible, and some of it speaks to communication directly. Uttar Pradesh has made English-language training mandatory for ITI trainees, and many plants are moving to digitised SOPs, structured shift handover formats and in-house training academies. Most of these efforts, however, focus on technical competence or general language ability, and not on what each role actually demands.

Communication has to be built in deliberately, starting with what each role actually requires. A machine operator, line supervisor, quality inspector and procurement executive each face different tasks, such as reading an SOP, giving a handover, escalating a deviation or speaking to a vendor. Once these are clear, they can be assessed at hiring and onboarding against job-relevant benchmarks, and not on interviews alone, with the aim of identifying where training is needed, not screening people out. That training works best when it draws on real situations like handovers, toolbox talks and escalation calls, and is built into ITI curricula and in-plant programmes, with SOPs in workers’ own languages, supported by visuals, alongside English where OEM documentation requires it. Finally, tracking rework, shift-handover incidents, escalation time and early attrition shows plant heads what the effort is delivering.

Together, these steps address the costs described above at their source. Assessed at hiring, built through training and tracked against plant performance, communication becomes a managed capability and not a hidden cost. It also prepares the workforce for the Industry 5.0 roles that Indian manufacturing is moving towards.