Conference Brings Together Corning Environmental Health & Safety Leaders | Environmental Protection | Corning

Conference Brings Together Corning Environmental, Health, Safety Leaders

Conference Brings Together Corning EHS Leaders

More than 180 Corning employees from 75 facilities and 30 countries gathered in May 2017 for the Global Environmental, Health, and Safety Conference.

The four-day conference was held in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Occurring every three years, the conference gathers Corning’s Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) leaders from all over the world for presentations, breakout sessions, and networking. 

“At the conference, we spent significant time discussing how we can use our Standards to help employees grow, and leverage the Standards to achieve excellence,” said Tony Salvadore, director of Global Safety at Corning.

The conference allowed for collaboration amongst EHS professionals and leadership, including representatives from Corning’s Engineering Council. It also allowed a forum to strategize and discuss Corning’s path toward EHS excellence as the company continues to achieve record-low safety and environmental incidents. According to John Novotny, director of Corporate Environmental Control, “this is especially important as Corning continues to expand and grow, with more than 20 renovation, expansion, and construction projects happening this year.”

Tom Capek, vice president and chief engineer, Manufacturing Technology and Engineering (MTE), also addressed employees, discussing the 2017 MTE initiatives and metrics ongoing across all business units, while keeping a focus on EHS. 

“Corning will continue to strive towards EHS excellence, always going above and beyond regulatory requirements for the safety of our employees, contractors, and visitors, as well as environmental compliance,” said Capek. “With significant ongoing growth ahead, we need to stay extremely focused on EHS across the company.”

Kevin Parker, vice president, Manufacturing, kicked off the safety session of the EHS conference. His message focused on three key topics: 1) Reinforcement of the Safety Vision and processes that fold safety excellence into the overall Global Manufacturing and Quality strategy; 2) continued focus on reduction of incidents through engineering solutions; and 3) reinforcing the importance of the Leading Practices in the Corning Safety Systems. 

“Corning has a multi-year trend of improving and record level safety metrics and we should all be proud of this progress,” said Parker. “To continue this trend toward safety excellence, we must actively engage all levels of the organization in continual improvement of safety.  We must also excel at sharing and adopting leading safety practices.  Doing so will naturally lead us to fewer hazards and fewer injuries.” 

According to Salvadore and Novotny, “Leadership commitment, employee engagement, and passion for excellence are key ingredients to achieve EHS excellence. Throughout the conference in both environmental and safety sessions, it was evident that Corning is absolutely on the right path to excellence. There was tremendous positive energy in the conference and we are very excited to be with Corning and part of this terrific team.”