"Comply with safety, and more strictly"... Samyang Foods CEO Kim Dong-chan issues special directive on safety principles

[Financial News] Samyang Foods CEO Kim Dong-chan emphasized the strengthening of safety and hygiene at all of the company's factories. It appears that CEO Kim personally issued this special directive as awareness regarding hygiene and safety has risen following a series of recent industrial accidents in the food industry. Currently, the food industry is tightening its grip on preventing industrial accidents, including by introducing artificial intelligence (AI) systems into factories.
According to industry sources on the 3rd, CEO Kim disseminated the "Compliance with Absolute Principles" code, which reinforces safety and hygiene standards, to Samyang Foods factories in Wonju, Iksan, and Miryang. The core principle is to unconditionally adhere to hygiene and safety principles without exception. To this end, Samyang Foods has formed a field inspection campaign team to strengthen on-site inspections. The company is continuously raising the level of inspections while improving employee awareness and establishing basic order regarding hygiene and safety. Furthermore, it has taken steps to improve attire to prevent safety accidents. Factory workers were provided with "B-Care Grip Reinforced Gloves," which reduce pinching and tearing accidents, instead of standard coated gloves, and orders were issued to ban the wearing of aprons to completely prevent machine entanglement accidents.
Adherence to safety principles is spreading throughout the food industry. This is because factory safety management has become indispensable to respond to the strengthened Serious Accidents Punishment Act and enhance corporate image. For example, CJ CheilJedang recently achieved the highest rating in an evaluation by the Ministry of Employment and Labor by proactively introducing cutting-edge technologies at its Jincheon plant, such as an intelligent CCTV system utilizing iris recognition and AI, and smart safety helmets. Furthermore, the company is devoting all its efforts to safety management, including developing its own in-house training curriculum for supervisors tailored to the specific on-site conditions of each individual workplace.
Ottogi operates a regular monthly exchange meeting attended by safety managers from all workplaces to share safety management activities, accident cases, and improvement cases by site. In addition, since February of this year, safety organizations from each workplace have been visiting each other's sites to cross-check safety management.
Nongshim holds an Occupational Safety and Health Committee meeting quarterly to discuss and resolve major agenda items, such as accident prevention, and shares the results with workplaces nationwide. Currently, nearly 500 safety and health managers are stationed across the company, and they identify hazardous and dangerous factors at all workplaces, improving 418 cases of hazardous and dangerous factors last year.
"A food industry official stated, 'Due to the strengthening of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act, awareness across the industry regarding the need to pay close attention to on-site safety has significantly increased. As even a single accident can lead to fatal consequences, we are staking everything on safety management to prevent industrial accidents, even mobilizing cutting-edge technologies such as AI systems.'"
[email protected] Park Kyung-ho Reporter