Bridgestone Group Awards 2019 Recognizes the Best Global Projects

TOKYO, May 2, 2019 /3BL Media/ - Bridgestone Corporation announced the winners of the "Bridgestone Group Awards 2019" at a ceremony held on March 27, 2019.

The Bridgestone Group Awards began in 2008 as an annual recognition program open to all employees and organizations of the Bridgestone Group. This recognition program confers the Bridgestone Group’s highest level of awards to promote greater employee awareness and engagement incorporate activities based on the Bridgestone Essence. Since 2017 the program has included five categories based on the Group’s Our Way to Serve global CSR commitment, which includes the three Priority Areas of Mobility, People and Environment, an Achievement category, which recognizes excellence in general corporate activities, and the Management Fundamentals category that includes the Groups foundation areas to drive sustainability. Award recipients were selected by a panel of judges comprised of members of global executive management.

In the 2019 Ceremony, a total of nine projects were recognized as exemplary initiatives, representing all of the company’s regions. The Bridgestone Global Awards represent an important channel for accomplishing the Group’s ultimate goal of becoming a truly global company and achieving the standing of “Dan-Totsu”—the absolute and clear leader—in all aspects of its business.

Our Way to Serve is meant to guide the Bridgestone Group’s ongoing development as a sustainable company and to accelerate fulfilling its mission of “Serving Society with Superior Quality.” Accordingly, these awards are an important driver of innovation and continuous improvement that helps ensure the Group’s ongoing competitiveness in a rapidly changing business environment. 
The activities selected and recognized are as follows.

Achievement: One Winner

Name: Shaping Tomorrow: New Bridgestone Americas Headquarters
Recipients: Bridgestone Americas, Inc.
Overview: Following the construction of its new headquarters, Bridgestone Tower, and a new Operations Center in Nashville, Tennessee, Bridgestone Americas was able to consolidated more than 2,200 employees that had previously been spread across multiple bases, allowing for smoother communication between functions.

Mobility: One Winner

Name: “Precision Docking” Tire and Curb Development for Barrier-Free (Universal Design) of Advanced Rapid Transit
Recipients: Bridgestone Corporation Bridgestone BRM Co., Ltd.
Overview: This award was presented in recognition of a development project that examined both bus tires and curbs with the aim of enhancing curb docking by enabling bus tires to more closely approach curbs in order to minimize the gaps between boarding entrances and bus stops. The goal of this project was to allow for senior citizens, individuals using wheelchairs or pushing strollers, and others to board buses with greater ease. This project helped remove barriers to bus riding through the development of a specialized curb design for bus stops that prevents contact between vehicles and curbs while reducing wear on tire sidewalls as well as the development of technologies for avoiding wear on the portions of tire sidewalls that make contact with curbs.

People: Three Winners

Name: Driving Great Futures: Transporting More Youth Safely to Out-of-School Programming Recipients: Bridgestone Retail Operations, LLC Overview: Bridgestone Retail Operations helped support the safe transportation of children by donating to Boys & Girls Clubs of America, an organization that provides aid to economically disadvantaged children, to fund replacements and repairs of vehicles for transporting children.

Name: Improvement of the Support System in Disasters
Recipients: Bridgestone Tire Japan Co., Ltd., Bridgestone Corporation, Bridgestone Logistics Co., Ltd., Bridgestone Retail Japan Co., Ltd.
Overview: Learning from the recent increase in natural disasters, these companies introduced systems for confirming employee safety in times of disasters and also improved for storing emergency aid supply. These preparations proved beneficial when they facilitated the smooth confirmation of employee safety and provision of relief supplies to affected regions and stores following disasters that occurred in 2018, such as Typhoon Jebi and the Hokkaido Eastern Iburi earthquake.

Name: Bridgestone Indonesia Rescue Team for Community
Recipients: P.T. Bridgestone Tire Indonesia
Overview: Bridgestone Tire Indonesia took steps, including providing training to employees and assembling rescue teams, to prepare employees to rescue flood victims. Since 2010, employees of this company have provided safe evacuation procedures to approximately 1,000 flood victims while also offering support through the provision of relief supplies and evacuation areas. Environment: One Winner   Name: Reduction of Ground Water Use in Izmit Plant Recipients: Brisa Bridgestone Sabancı Lastik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. Overview: One of the medium-term targets of the Bridgestone Group’s long-term environmental vision is to reduce per unit water intake by 35% from the baseline year of 2005 by 2020. To help move us toward this target, Bridgestone’s Izmit Plant has set the goal of reducing per unit water intake by 61% from the baseline year of 2008 by 2020. To accomplish this goal, the Izmit Plant has been working to conserve water within the plan while utilizing systems for recycling cooling water. As a result, in 2018 the plant realized a 47% reduction in per unit water intake from the baseline year of 2008.

Management Fundamentals: Three Winner

Name: Safety Transformation Journey: New Approaches to, Engage and Train Our Teammates
Recipients: Bridgestone Europe NV/SA
Overview: Bridgestone Europe has been implementing initiatives for improving the quality of its employee safety education programs. For example, this company created videos for raising awareness regarding potential dangers based on the theme of actual factory workplaces. In addition, the Béthune Plant in France conducts safety trainings that incorporate VR technologies. As a result of these initiatives, Bridgestone Europe witnessed a 30% reduction in occupational accidents in 2018 in comparison to 2016.

Name: “Global TQM Culture of Continuous Improvement“ Together with “QMK Foundation” Recipients: Bridgestone Corporation, Bridgestone Americas, Inc., Bridgestone Europe NV/SA, Bridgestone Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. Overview: The Bridgestone Group Global TQM Conference*1 is an event that has been held 148 times leading up to 2018 since its first iteration in 1963. Also, the Saga Plant commenced QMK*2 activities in 1985, and a total of 307 QMK-related meetings have been held to date. In this manner, the Group has a long and ongoing history of high-quality improvement activities. These companies have entrenched this culture of improvement into manufacturing bases and offices across the globe in order to disseminate and cultivate a Groupwide TQM culture. ^*1 TQM is an acronym for “total quality management.” Bridgestone’s TQM conferences serve as an opportunity for sharing information about superior workplace improvement activities in order to raise organization-wide quality awareness and enhance future TQM activities. In 2010, the Bridgestone Group began holding global-scale TQM conferences. *² QMK is an acronym that combines “quality control” and “mondai kaiketsu (problem solving)” to encourage problem solving through quality control.
  Name: Name The Launch and Implementation of Three Key Global Policies: “Global Sustainable Procurement Policy,”“Global Human: Rights Policy,” and the “Bridgestone Code of Conduct”, Recipients Bridgestone Corporation, Bridgestone Americas, Inc. Bridgestone Europe NV/SA, Bridgestone Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Bridgestone Singapore Pte. Ltd.
Overview: These companies contributed to the improvement of the framework created by the Bridgestone Group’s corporate philosophy and global CSR commitment through the launch and implementation of three global policies: Global Sustainable Procurement Policy, Global Human Rights Policy, and Bridgestone Code of Conduct.

About Bridgestone Corporation:
Bridgestone Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo, is the world’s largest tire and rubber company. In addition to tires for use in a wide variety of applications, it also manufactures a broad range of diversified products, which include industrial rubber and chemical products and sporting goods. Its products are sold in over 150 nations and territories around the world.

Bridgestone Corporation
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www.bridgestone.com