Although Goodyear held the safety leadership position in the tire and rubber industry in 2004, its leadership recognized that achieving world-class performance would require a culture change within the company and that any such change must begin at the top of the organization.

Endorsing the four elements of Goodyear's "No One Gets Hurt" initiative: Leadership, Behavior, Ergonomics and Preventive Maintenance/Compliance, leadership in 2005 set the stage to achieve significant performance breakthroughs that would reduce the company's OSHA incident rate to less than 1.0 by the end of 2007. Achieving this goal would place Goodyear's safety performance among the world's best safety performance companies.

Site visits became a key part of the strategy to reduce injuries, as Goodyear's executive leadership team visited locations whose safety record in 2004 placed them among the operations with the highest number of incidents, calling attention to the number of incidents at a specific location. Such visits focused attention and resources on how to reduce incidents occurring at locations around the world. By the end of the year, the leadership team had visited ten global locations.

In March 2005, Goodyear established the first Wednesday of each month as Global Safety Day. In North American tire plants, faceto-face communications was a primary tool to convey the value of safety, with local management and safety leadership meeting with team members during shift changes, reminding them to work safely. Facilities in Europe, Latin America, and Asia also implemented systems that not only communicated with associates, but also to vendors and visitors. All manufacturing, service, and warehouse sites increased their attention to identifying and immediately addressing conditions that created opportunities for injury.

Building on its success, the company established both Global Safety Week and Global Safety Month. By the end of the year, Goodyear's performance on ten Global Safety Days, two Global Safety Weeks and one Global Safety Month yielded improvements of more than 40 percent over the daily average of OSHA incidents.

Working closely with the United Steelworkers, which represents Goodyear's bargaining unit associates in the U.S., Goodyear and the USW held its first day-long safety summit, and formed a joint steering committee to develop cooperative solutions to safety issues.

Actions undertaken to improve safety include preparing training and certification programs, upgrading equipment, bringing machines into compliance, and using the plant's safety committee to motivate associates to eliminate at-risk behavior. Business team members, maintenance technicians, and machine operators regularly inspect equipment to verify conditions, develop action plans that specify improvement, ensure a good understanding of work methods, and require job-specific safety training in Goodyear's global manufacturing locations. Post-incident surveys, thorough safety audits, and widespread implementation of corrective actions prevent incidents from recurring. In operations worldwide, local leadership is held accountable to include safety goals as part of annual operating plans, and make on-the-spot corrections of unsafe conditions and acts, while all compliance items are addressed within 72 hours.

Goodyear's tire plant in Americana, Brazil achieved a safety record, going incident free for 51 days, while in Peru, associates were able to take the safety test. Associates answering correctly all of the questions could receive safety-theme prizes, such as home fire extinguishers, auto emergency lights, and first-aid kits.

Wingfoot Commercial Systems developed a Job Safety Analysis program to use in its training and daily operations. Its training program also includes specific safety training prior to any task being performed by a newly hired associate. In addition, an experienced safety sponsor is assigned and works with the new associate until job task proficiency is demonstrated. Wingfoot's approach to safety resulted in an OSHA incident rate decline of almost four points.

In its U.S. retail operations, Goodyear developed and implemented a 1-800-"how's my driving" program for all company-owned vehicles. All calls to the 800 number are investigated. As a result, Goodyear recognized a 31 percent reduction in driver-related incidents. Retail operations began auditing for at-risk behaviors as part of regular monthly inspections of physical conditions at company-operated outlets.

Goodyear's commitment to strengthen its global safety performance achieved a 21 percent improvement, when compared to the previous year.