Through Goodyear’s integrated EHS governance approach, objectives cascade from senior leadership to the regions and then to each facility. Our Vice President & Chief Sustainability Officer facilitates the Goodyear EHS Governance Council, which provides an aligned strategy for regional EHS teams and sets organizational EHS expectations. Goodyear’s Senior Leadership Team holds the Governance Council and local facility teams accountable for strategy execution and results.
Our EHS Policy underscores the principles that guide us toward continuous EHS improvement in our workplaces. Additionally, 19 facilities are Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) 18001/ISO 45001-certified, along with the 47 facilities that are certified to ISO 14001. In 2019, we implemented our enhanced EHS Management System across all customer-facing operations, including retail and field service support businesses. The system aligns with recognized standards, including ISO 45001, and serves as a valuable infrastructure to support our response to COVID-19. Our pandemic response focuses on risk assessment and the deployment of countermeasures in alignment with the hierarchy of controls. The controls, including engineering controls, administrative controls and personal protective equipment, were deployed through our employee teams and governed through global, regional, and local steering committees and audit and inspection processes.
Plant Optimization (P.O.) is our manufacturing operating system that is built on the foundation of People and Environmental Care (PEC). Associates are meaningfully engaged in EHS through PEC. Over the past four years, 802 associates completed the formal two-week, intensive P.O. Academy.
The number of completed P.O. Academy eLearning courses was 21,486 in 2021, which is an increase from 20,421 in 2020 and 13,484 in 2019.
Work-related hazards are identified through associate recognition and identification, audits conducted by third parties skilled in the identification of EHS hazards, and facility management and safety team engagement through audits and safety walks. We use technology to track and execute our safety audit and inspection process. For example, the store locations in our North America Retail Operations complete their field leadership audits using our Risk Identification and Management System (RIMS) mobile application for ease of reporting, trending and tracking findings to closure.
Formal health and safety committees represent 100% of our manufacturing associates.
Goodyear measures our safety progress through both leading and lagging indicators. In 2021 we expanded our leading indicators to include key metrics related to ergonomics; industrial hygiene; EHS management system maturity; associate engagement; Corrective Action/Preventative Action (CAPA) related to audits, inspections and near-miss incidents; near-miss incident reporting; Serious Injury (SI) and SI Potential; Total Incident Rate (TIR) (injuries that require medical treatment above first aid and restricted/lost-time injuries); contractor injuries; and first-aid injuries. As mentioned earlier in this report, because our acquisition of Cooper did not close until June 2021, this report does not feature many Cooper activities or events, nor does it include data from legacy Cooper facilities unless otherwise noted.
All incidents, including injuries, illnesses, near misses and property damage, are investigated. Causes are then identified, and corrections developed and implemented. These are captured in our EHS Management System for internal escalation, sharing of lessons learned, analysis, and data analysis.
We experienced a reduction in total serious injuries from our baseline year of 2018. However, we did experience 13 serious injuries in 2021. We remain committed to take actions needed in the furtherance of our goal of eliminating all serious injuries and fatalities in our workplace. We will continue to learn and build maturity in SI prevention, and teams throughout our global footprint are committed to reaching our goal of zero.