How PepsiCo South America Used a 180-Day Safety Plan to Cut Accident Ratio 50%

A safety transformation can have a clear deadline and still drift into a collection of workshops, posters, and unfinished action items. The PepsiCo South America result offers a more demanding lesson. Under a 180-day plan led by Andreza Araujo, the business reduced its accident ratio by 50% in six months, according to Andreza Araujo's documented professional record.

The important question is not whether another company can reproduce the same percentage. It cannot responsibly be promised. The useful question is what made the plan executable across a large operating environment, where cultural expectations, production pressure, and local leadership habits had to move together.

As described in Safety Culture: From Theory to Practice, culture becomes visible through the decisions an organization repeats under pressure. The PepsiCo case is therefore less about a campaign and more about an operating rhythm that made those decisions harder to postpone.

Initial scenario: why a safety plan needed more than training

A large food and consumer-goods network does not behave like one site. PepsiCo South America included seven countries, 30 factories, and 168 distribution centers during Andreza Araujo's tenure, which meant that a local intervention could not depend on one charismatic manager or one central presentation.

The practical problem in that environment was not a lack of safety language. Most organizations already have policies, procedures, and training records. The harder problem is whether the same priorities appear in capital decisions, supervisor routines, contractor conversations, and the response to an emerging exposure.

That distinction separates cultural transformation from compliance activity. A training session can explain the expected behavior, while the operating system still rewards speed, tolerates weak controls, or leaves escalation without an owner. The plan had to reach those management conditions.

Decision: make the transformation a 180-day operating commitment

The first strategic decision was to create a defined 180-day horizon. A time-bound plan changes the conversation because leaders must decide what will be different by the end of the period, which evidence will show progress, and what work cannot wait for a longer redesign.

This does not mean that culture changes in six months. It means that six months can be long enough to test whether leadership behavior, control ownership, and follow-up are becoming more consistent. The horizon creates pressure for execution without pretending that a mature culture can be installed by a launch date.

The decision also moved the center of gravity from the safety department to the operating line. EHS can diagnose, coach, challenge, and measure, but plant and business leaders must decide how resources, production priorities, and accountability will support the controls that protect people.

Execution: connect diagnosis to the work leaders actually manage

A diagnostic has value only when it changes what leaders inspect. The plan therefore needed to translate cultural findings into observable management routines, including how supervisors discussed risk, how leaders responded to bad news, and how unresolved barriers moved through the organization.

Andreza Araujo's work on safety culture emphasizes the difference between declared values and practiced behavior. In practical terms, the question is not whether a manager says that safety comes first. The question is what happens when a critical control is unavailable, a delivery is late, or an employee raises a concern that complicates the schedule.

The execution rhythm should make those moments visible. Leaders review a limited set of meaningful exposures, visit the work where the risk is present, ask what prevents the expected control from working, and assign a named owner for the barrier. The next review checks whether the condition changed, not merely whether a task was marked complete.

That sequence matters because corrective-action systems often measure activity instead of control effectiveness. A closed action can still leave the hazard intact when the action was vague, the owner lacked authority, or the verification occurred only on paper.

Measured result: what the 50% reduction proves, and what it does not

The documented outcome was a 50% reduction in accident ratio over six months. It is a strong result, but it should be read with discipline. The percentage demonstrates that a coordinated intervention produced measurable movement in that business context. It does not establish a universal effect size for every site or industry.

The result also does not prove that one indicator is sufficient. Accident ratios describe an important outcome, yet they cannot show every serious exposure that has not produced an injury. Leaders should therefore use the result as evidence that execution can move performance, while continuing to inspect critical controls and precursor conditions.

Why the operating rhythm mattered more than the launch event

Transformation programs often begin with energy and lose force when ordinary management routines return. The PepsiCo example points in the opposite direction. A six-month result depends on repeated decisions that survive the excitement of the launch.

Those decisions include which risks receive leadership attention, whether supervisors have time to verify controls, how quickly concerns are escalated, and whether a manager can stop or redesign work when the barrier is not reliable. A culture becomes credible when those choices are repeated even when no campaign is visible.

This is why a plan should specify cadence. A weekly review can test immediate barriers. A monthly review can examine recurring patterns and resource decisions. A 180-day review can determine which routines became normal and which depended on temporary sponsorship.

Generalizable lessons from the PepsiCo transformation

The case offers four lessons that can be transferred without copying its scale or claiming its result.

1. Start with a decision, not a slogan. Define what leaders must decide differently, such as whether production can continue when a critical control is absent.
2. Limit the first horizon. Choose a manageable set of exposures and routines for the first 180 days, because an overloaded plan makes ownership impossible to see.
3. Make leadership behavior observable. Field presence, response to concerns, and verification of controls should be inspected as operating practices.
4. Measure movement and learn its limits. Use outcome data, but compare it with evidence about exposure, control reliability, and unresolved barriers.

What to apply in your operation during the next 30 days

A plant or regional leader can adapt the case without copying the organization chart. Begin with one page that names the three exposures most capable of producing a serious injury or fatality, the current control for each exposure, and the person who can authorize a change.

Then establish a weekly review with four questions. What changed in the field? Which control remains unreliable? What decision is blocked? Who will verify the change and when? The questions are deliberately plain because complexity can disguise the absence of ownership.

During the first month, avoid setting a numerical accident-reduction promise. Set a verification promise instead. Every selected exposure should have evidence that the control is present, usable, understood, and checked under normal operating pressure.

Andreza Araujo's Safety Culture Diagnosis: Learn how to do your own is useful when the organization needs a more formal assessment. The purpose of the assessment is not to produce a maturity label. It is to reveal which leadership decisions and work conditions must change next.

FAQ

What was the PepsiCo South America safety result?

Under a 180-day plan led by Andreza Araujo, PepsiCo South America achieved a 50% reduction in accident ratio in six months. The result is part of Andreza Araujo's documented professional record.

Was the reduction caused by safety training alone?

No. The transferable lesson is that training has limited value when it is separated from leadership routines, operational controls, and verification. The case is best understood as a coordinated cultural and operating intervention.

What made the 180-day plan practical?

The plan created a defined time horizon, connected diagnosis to action, and required leaders to maintain a repeatable rhythm for decisions, field presence, and follow-up. It made safety an operating discipline rather than an occasional campaign.

Can another company expect the same 50% reduction?

No responsible safety article should promise the same percentage. Results depend on baseline conditions, exposure, leadership capacity, control quality, and execution. The case offers a method to test, not a guaranteed outcome.

How should a plant leader begin a similar transformation?

Start by selecting the few exposures that can produce serious harm, documenting the current controls, assigning accountable owners, and establishing a weekly review in which leaders inspect evidence from the field instead of accepting completion reports.

The PepsiCo result is valuable because it shows what a focused plan can achieve when diagnosis, leadership, and execution move together. The next step is not to copy the percentage. It is to create a rhythm in which important safety decisions are made, owned, and verified before the exposure becomes an injury.