Tomorrow is Workers Memorial Day. April 28. The day we're supposed to remember the people who went to work and didn't come home.
I want to tell you about one of them.
Last July, a worker at Adonel Block Manufacturing in Miami walked into the unprotected area of a concrete block cubing machine. He was killed. OSHA investigated and found nine serious violations. No machine guarding. No lockout/tagout procedures. No markings on electrical panels. The locking mechanism didn't work.
The total penalty was $58,604.
That number should make you angry. But what should make you angrier is how predictable the whole thing was.
Every one of those violations was basic. Machine guarding. Lockout/tagout. These aren't obscure regulations. They're day-one stuff. Every quality manager reading this has seen them on an OSHA poster in their break room.
I keep coming back to the same question. How does a shop operate day after day with no machine guards and no lockout/tagout and nobody fixes it until someone dies?
The answer is the same answer behind every unfixed quality problem. Everyone knew. Nobody acted. The operator knew. The supervisor knew. It was on someone's list. It was going to get addressed next month. There was always something more urgent.
This is why I believe quality and safety are the same discipline. They run on the same culture. The shop that leaves a machine guard off because production can't stop is the same shop that skips incoming inspection because they need the material on the line. The shop that doesn't enforce lockout/tagout is the same shop that signs off on CAPAs without verifying anything changed.
It's the same decision every time. We know the right thing to do. We don't do it because doing it costs time, and time costs money, and nobody has either.
Wipfli just surveyed 300 manufacturing leaders for Q1 2026. The number one concern? Higher cost of doing business. Raw materials. Wages. Operating costs. At the same time, 38% more firms are hiring for growth than last year. Revenue expectations are up. EBIT is expected to hold or improve.
Manufacturers are growing. But growth without quality and safety infrastructure is how you end up with a $58,604 line item that used to be a person.
Tomorrow, if you're a quality manager or a safety manager or both (because at most shops, you're both), take five minutes to walk the floor. Not for an audit. Not for a checklist. Just look. Look at the machine guards. Look at the lockout stations. Look at the things you've been meaning to fix.
Then fix one of them before the end of the week.
That's how you honor the day.
One Thing to Try This Week
Walk your floor with one question: what's the oldest unresolved safety or quality finding we have? Not the most recent. The oldest. The one that keeps getting pushed to next month. If it's been open for more than 90 days, it's not a finding anymore. It's a decision you've made to accept the risk. Decide whether you're actually okay with that.
What I'm Reading
The CPSC launched a national effort to combat recall fraud on April 15. They're asking for public input on how to prevent people from filing fraudulent recall claims for refunds. About 60% of recalls in 2025 included refunds as part of the remedy. The interesting part for quality teams: regulators are now thinking about the systems around recalls, not just the recalls themselves. Traceability and lot-level documentation are becoming more important than ever. If your shop is doing contract manufacturing, your customers' recall exposure is your documentation problem.
When was the last time you walked your floor and actually looked?
Talk soon,
Mojtaba