---
title: "Why Volvo Chose Built-In AI to Standardize Safety | Cority"
description: "See how Volvo Group North America used Cortex AI to standardize incident investigations across 40+ locations and move from reactive to preventive safety."
canonical: "/customer-stories-1/volvo-ai-safety-investigations-case-study"
published: 2026-10-23
---

# Why Volvo Chose Built-In AI to Standardize Safety | Cority

## Header

## Hero

### 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

## Challenge

###### THE CHALLENGE

###### Consistent safety across sites

###### Volvo Group North America makes trucks, buses, construction equipment, and marine engines. Across 40+locationsand 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’dsee the same thing happen at another location. The investigations were alldifferent,the findings were all different, and so were the actions. We were missing something."

## Approach 2

###### 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 leadersidentifypatterns, 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.”

###### CorityOneconnected Volvo’s data and AI on a trusted foundation.

## Transformation

###### THE TRANSFORMATION

###### Trusted AI, embedded

###### This is whereCortex AIcame in. Volvo already usedCority's Incident Management softwareand 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.”

###### Incident identification

###### AI agents helpidentifyincidents and near misses within incident workflows.

###### Recommended actions

###### The CAPA Recommendation Agentidentifiescorrective and preventive steps to help avoid future incidents.

###### 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

###### THE OUTCOME

###### 40+ locations, a stronger foundation for prevention

###### Volvo hasinitiatedan enterprise-wideshiftimprovingpreventive safety. Consistent, comparable data strengthens investigation rigor across 40+ locations, creating conditions toidentifypatterns 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 highlightsrisksinvestigators 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 nowidentifythe 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 intoCorityOne—not as a third-party add-on—Volvo’s teams trust the platform.The ease of Voice Entry means peopleactually useit, not just get trained on it.That confidence accelerates adoption across the enterprise.

## Quote

###### 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.

###### 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.

###### "Being able to seewhat’sthe 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 whatwe’reseeing now out of investigations and corrections? That’s what I want to unlock."

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