Hankook Tire transformed their safety operations from a paper-based system to a digital platform, dramatically reducing workers' compensation processing time while enabling employees to proactively report safety concerns for the first time. The implementation achieved near-universal employee adoption and fundamentally shifted the organization from reactive to proactive safety management, significantly reducing reportable incidents year-over-year.
Across all organizational levels and departments
With most issues resolved within 30 days
Year over year Hankook recorded at least 15 fewer OSHA incidenes
Hankook's safety operations relied entirely on manual processes. Incident reports were handwritten, safety inspections involved clipboards and filing cabinets, and near-miss reporting required employees to go through their supervisors with no guarantee the information would reach safety leadership.
Key Pain Points:
The team evaluated several major EHS platforms including KPA, Velocity EHS, and Safety Site. However, the pricing models presented significant challenges—quotes ranged from $100,000 to $300,000 annually, with most requiring individual licenses for each employee.
With expansion plans to reach 1,400 workers, some systems would have required up to 2,800 licenses, making the total cost prohibitive while offering limited flexibility.
SafetyAmp offered comparable functionality at a significantly lower cost, plus flexible user management that better suited Hankook's operational needs.
Hankook took a collaborative approach to implementation, prioritizing input from the people who would actually use the system daily.
Over six months, Patrick and Scott worked directly with group leaders, supervisors, and frontline workers to ensure the system would meet real operational needs. Each week, they gathered feedback and made iterative improvements to forms, workflows, and interfaces.
Worked directly with group leaders and supervisors to understand real-world needs and ensure the system usability.
Deployed tablets across all departments, improved Wi-Fi coverage, and created QR codes for equipment inspections.
Six months of weekly feedback sessions and system refinements to ensure the platform met everyone's needs.
System went live on March 1st with immediate impact, followed by ongoing improvements based on user feedback.
The system delivered measurable results from day one. Incident notifications began flowing to management in real-time, equipment inspections could be completed in seconds using QR codes, and workers gained direct access to report safety concerns.
The most significant change was in near-miss reporting. After recording zero near-miss reports the previous year, the plant documented 74 in the first three months—indicating employees felt comfortable reporting potential hazards before they became incidents.
Each near-miss report represents a potential incident that was identified and addressed proactively, contributing to the overall reduction in OSHA reportable incidents and supporting the shift toward preventive safety management.
User adoption exceeded expectations, with supervisors actively requesting additional data visualizations and analytics. Rather than resistance to the new system, the team observed widespread engagement across all organizational levels.
"We have like 95, 98% buy-in on this system. Nobody has pushed back on SafetyAmp" - Scott Peterson
The visual dashboards proved particularly valuable for Hankook's diverse workforce, including Korean expatriate employees. The graphical representations of safety data helped bridge language barriers and provided universal access to critical safety information.
The transformation at Hankook was about giving people the tools and voice they needed to make their workplace safer.
Workers who once had no way to report concerns now had a direct line to safety leadership. Managers who once waited days for incident reports now had real-time visibility. Korean and American employees who once struggled with communication barriers now shared a common visual language around safety data.
"I am happy and proud to say that the EHS department at Hankook has slowly moved from a reactive state to a proactive state, and we're now dealing with leading indicators of safety issues versus lagging indicators." - Patrick McDowell, Senior Safety Specialist
The results speak for themselves: OSHA reportable incidents dropped from 17 to 7. Workers' compensation claims that once took nearly a week to process now happened the same day. Most importantly, safety became everyone's responsibility, not just the EHS team's.
As Hankook expands its Clarksville operations to 1,400 employees and adds truck tire production capabilities, the digital safety infrastructure provides a foundation for managing increased complexity while maintaining safety standards.
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