Our 2013 Safety Record

The year 2013 marked the third year since 1918 in which we did not have an employee work-related fatality. Tragically, however, we did experience fatalities of contractors in Chicago, India and Russia. Our primary objective remains zero fatalities on Ford property.

Overall, our safety record improved compared to 2012. A major safety indicator – the lost-time case rate – was at 0.44, a nearly 14 percent improvement from the 2012 rate of 0.51. We experienced 131 serious injuries among our direct and joint venture employees, compared to 139 the previous year. Most of these injuries should have been prevented.

While we are pleased that we did not have a fatality among any of our own employees, we recognize that we must remain vigilant. In 2013, we had 426 high-potential reported events that could have resulted in more serious consequences, but did not. Each of the incidents was investigated, resulting in many global preventive measures. While this number may seem high, we see it as a sign of higher organizational awareness of potential risks and a willingness to share information with others so the same events do not happen elsewhere.

We have been encouraging all employees to alert management to every injury or hazard, no matter how small, so that we can learn from every mistake, take corrective actions and create a safer workplace for everyone. We continue working in a collaborative way with the UAW¹ to change the culture so that individuals are motivated to take greater responsibility and ownership for addressing any safety risks and unsafe behaviors.

As we have rebounded from the economic downturn, our plants are making more vehicles than they were in recent years. Given the relative activity levels and relative rates of lost time and serious injury, our U.S. operations have the greatest opportunity for improvement of any of our locations worldwide.

We continue the process of upgrading our information technology to create a common global system for tracking workplace injuries, incidents and causal factors. Having a common system to record incidents will allow us to conduct much more detailed analyses of each event and, as a result, improve overall performance.

We’re also continuing to work to develop a common global approach to the use of personal protective equipment. The new data-gathering system will allow us to make comparisons and analyze trends among injuries so we can identify which personal equipment result in fewer injuries.

For more information, see the Workplace Safety data page of this report.