Bridgestone has achieved an incredible milestone at its retread plant in the United States. Bridgestone manufactures retreads under the “Bandag” brand. Its US subsidiary, Bridgestone Americas Inc has a factory in Griffin, Georgia which has now crossed the milestone of over one million man-hours without a single lost-time accident.
Commenting on the achievement, Christy Brasher, the manager of the factory at Griffin said that safety is one of Bridgestone’s core values. The staff at the plant and throughout the company focuses highly on safety. Crossing one million man hours is not only a significant milestone but also translates into millions of safe decisions that have been made by the employees. He said that the achievement highlighted the commitment of the staff, the dedication of the team and the advanced nature of the processes used in the plant.
The Griffin factory has in place fundamental safety activities that facilitate strong cross-functional employee involvement. These safety activities include proactive hazard identification and safety inspections, root cause analysis, behavior-based safety evaluations and engineering automation.
The Griffin plant has a longstanding reputation for safety, and has already won three Excellence Awards from the Rubber Manufacturers Association’s (RMA) Safety and Health Improvement Program (SHIP). The “Excellence” category recognizes facilities that achieve a Days Away Restricted Transfer (DART) rate that is 75% better than the average achieved by plants that provided data to RMA.
