Another million incident-free hours for Cooper Tupelo plant

Workers at Cooper Tire & Rubber’s Findlay plant may still be locked out but at Cooper’s facility in Tupelo, Mississippi, employees reached one million man-hours without a lost-time incident during the course of this week. The achievement marks the second time Cooper's Tupelo employees reached the million-hour mark; in September 2010 they also passed a million hours without a lost-time case.

“Tupelo continues to demonstrate its serious commitment to safety by reaching this mark,” said John Bodard, Cooper’s vice-president of North America Tire Manufacturing. “To put this achievement in perspective, most manufacturers would be proud to report just one such milestone during the entire lifetime of a plant.”

Tupelo plant manager Pat Jodon added: “This milestone achievement is the result of the entire Tupelo Plant team’s commitment and dedication to developing a safety culture that strives to attain zero accidents and a belief that all accidents are preventable. The Tupelo Plant team has made impressive strides in driving our plant’s safety performance, but under no circumstances will our plant be satisfied until we attain our ultimate goal of zero accidents.”

Earlier this year, the Tupelo facility received the Rubber Manufacturers Association’s “improvement” award under their Safety and Health Improvement Program, which was created in 1981 to recognise member companies for significant enhancements in worker health and safety. The improvement award is for plants that achieve an incidence rate that is both ten per cent better than its rate in the previous year and the same or better than the RMA average incidence rate. The RMA recognized just 18 member facilities with awards this year. The data supplied to RMA is identical to information provided to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, which publishes injury and illness information on all industries.

Four months after Tupelo employees reached their first one million-hour milestone, employees of Cooper Kunshan Tire in Kunshan, China, reached a million hours without a lost-time incident on 9 January 2011. And on 23 October, Cooper’s Corporación de Occidente SA de CV joint venture plant passed one million hours without a lost-time accident.

Corporate health, safety and security manager Eric Kerner said the company continues to press toward achieving its goal of no lost-time incidents. “With three of our seven manufacturing facilities reaching the million-hour mark this year alone, 2011 marks a big step closer to that goal,” he said.