Why Volvo Adopted AI to Standardize Safety Across 40+ Locations
Volvo Group North America chose built-in AI to bring consistency to incident investigations and strengthen safety learning across its operations.
CUSTOMER STORY | AUTOMOTIVE SECTOR
THE CHALLENGE
Consistent safety across sites
Volvo Group North America makes trucks, buses, construction equipment, and marine engines. Across 40+ locations and over 19,000 workers, the team needed an integrated approach to safety. Mike Kalbaugh, Health Safety Environmental Manager, saw investigations vary across locations, leaving learning siloed and recurring risks harder to recognize.
"We would see something happen, and then a few years later, we’d see the same thing happen at another location. The investigations were all different, the findings were all different, and so were the actions. We were missing something."
Siloed investigations
Manual data entry and varied processes left safety learnings siloed. Leaders saw incident counts, while recurring risks went unrecognized across sites.
Shared safety learning
Comparable data and more consistent investigations help leaders identify patterns, standardize responses, and move toward preventive safety across sites.
CORTEX AI
Mike Kalbaugh on choosing AI inside the platform:
“[Cority] was the only tool we evaluated that had an AI platform connected as a Cority item, not a third-party add-on.”
CorityOne connected Volvo’s data and AI on a trusted foundation.
THE TRANSFORMATION
Trusted AI, embedded
This is where Cortex AI came in. Volvo already used Cority's Incident Management software and Audits & Inspections, providing a trusted foundation for AI workflows.
“The person just talked into their phone... they just walked through what happened and the [Voice Entry Agent] filled out everything in the incident investigation in less than two minutes.”
Recommended actions
The CAPA Recommendation Agent identifies corrective and preventive steps to help avoid future incidents.
Incident identification
AI agents help identify incidents and near misses within incident workflows.
Voice Entry for incidents
Teams can capture incident details via voice. Describe what happened and the system auto-populates the investigation form.
Insights from audits
The Audit Insight agent highlights key information from past audits, helping teams review their findings.
Image Analysis for safety
Incident Image Analysis helps teams get high-quality information into the system faster, supporting their incident investigations.
IT Security Advantage
Cortex analyzes without storing. Zero data retention + platform-embedded approach = no external data exposure.
THE OUTCOME
40+ locations, a stronger foundation for prevention
Volvo has initiated an enterprise-wide shift improving preventive safety. Consistent, comparable data strengthens investigation rigor across 40+ locations, creating conditions to identify patterns and build prevention measures.
INVESTIGATIONS - LIVE
Under 2 minutes
Teams can capture incident details via Voice Entry and complete investigations in under 2 minutes.
Capture
<2 min
More thorough findings
AI highlights risks investigators might have missed, surfacing investigation findings more thoroughly. More consistent investigation rigor creates conditions for learning across locations.
Cross-site patterns
By standardizing how incident data is captured and investigated across the enterprise, safety leaders can now identify the patterns that previously went undetected—the same issues happening at different plants with completely different responses. Now those patterns can surface common corrections and procedures that scale globally.
Built-in confidence across the team
By embedding Cortex directly into CorityOne—not as a third-party add-on—Volvo’s teams trust the platform. The ease of Voice Entry means people actually use it, not just get trained on it. That confidence accelerates adoption across the enterprise.
Volvo’s shift toward preventive safety starts with trustworthy data, consistent investigation practices, and AI embedded in the platform teams already use. Global governance helps the organization use its own data to improve processes and workflows, supporting learning across its operations.
"Being able to see what’s the benefit here so that people can see how much time have we saved? Is there a query that can compare what data we were getting before—as far as findings and controls—to what we’re seeing now out of investigations and corrections? That’s what I want to unlock."
For Mike Kalbaugh, built-in AI was a key reason to choose Cority. It helped Volvo move AI-enabled workflows forward with a trusted vendor and pass IT security review.
Subscribe for EHS & ESG insights, event invites, and industry updates