At U. S. Steel’s open-pit taconite mines, the 12-foot-tall tires on front-end loaders and haul trucks posed a safety hazard. The company had no consistent method to track the health of the tires, which led to potential overheating, high/low air pressure or defectiveness. This caused significant injuries to employees, including one worker who sustained multiple fractures when a tire exploded.
To solve the problem, U. S. Steel implemented the Michelin Earthmover Management System, a tool that tracks the temperature and pressure of the tires. Since incorporating the new technology, the company has had to remove zero tires from service and saved almost $1 million. U. S. Steel believes the project will reduce incidents and potentially save lives. The company plans to share its success through benchmarking activities and best practice presentations with professional organizations and conferences.
Legends Hospitality
Founded in 2008, Legends Hospitality’s operations are spread across 100 different sports and entertainment venues and organizations. The company had no consistent safety culture, and lacked central mechanisms to track injury and incident data, spot trends or drive safety measures. In 2017, the company launched a comprehensive safety program. The initiative improved communication, simplified incident reporting and implemented technology solutions to track injury data. In 2020, Legends quickly supplemented these measures to address COVID-19, enabling the company to protect workers while complying with reporting requirements.
Legends has seen drastic improvements in company-wide safety since incorporating its safety program. The percentage of injuries and incidents reported has improved, and the average reporting time has gone from nearly 12 days to under 48 hours. The company found faster reporting facilitated timely employee communication, better treatment, improved outcomes and a reduction in litigation.
Parking Concepts, Inc.
Parking Concepts, Inc. (PCI) operates in more than 185 locations and parks over 75,000 cars each day in the busiest airports and cities in North America. In 2017, mounting work-related injuries and costs prompted the company to create a comprehensive safety and risk reduction plan.
The new safety program included a website with safety resources for managers, weekly safety calls, quarterly safety conferences and a new focus on safety as the top priority. In 2020, in response to COVID-19, the company quickly created new training materials and written policies and procedures, as well as distributed personal protective equipment and held weekly COVID-19 safety calls. As a result of these new procedures, injuries fell by 78%, and costs and litigated claims both dropped by more than 80%. Finally, work-related COVID-19 positives stayed at less than 2%.
