A member of the TACOM workforce works on a vehicle at Anniston Army Depot.
(Photo Credit: U.S. Army photo)
DETROIT ARSENAL, Mich. –Building and maintaining the range of systems that Soldiers use to protect Americans worldwide is one of the Army’s top priorities. For every Soldier driving a Bradley Fighting Vehicle or firing an Abrams tank, there are Civilians working day and night on factory floors throughout the Army’s Organic Industrial Base operating blast furnaces and 3D printers. Their goal? Ensuring that those Soldiers have the parts they need to keep the tanks running and the guns firing.
As manufacturing focuses and methods change and modernize over time, standards for safety and occupational health practices have evolved to ensure maximum worker safety for the OIB workforce. At the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, this has led to the implementation of new measures to help protect the vital workers and artisans that make the mission of Soldier sustainment possible.
This commitment to safety was recently highlighted as three TACOM installations – Anniston Army Depot, Red River Army Depot and Sierra Army Depot – were recognized under the fiscal year 2025 Secretary of the Army and Chief of Staff Safety Awards Program. The Army Safety Awards Program is designed to recognize, promote and motivate success in accident prevention through risk management by recognizing the accomplishments in the field of safety by individuals and units.
Finding out how to integrate safety can be a complex and lengthy process that requires organization and dedicated support. That’s where individuals like TACOM Safety and Occupational Health Director Erik Gustafson come in.
“The Army Safety and Occupational Health program across TACOM is designed to guide our leaders at all levels on how we can reduce hazards and risks. One of the ways we do that is by setting and implementing standards,” Gustafson said. “The SOH initiative is particularly important in our industrial environments, which often involve inherently hazardous processes and tasks.”
In simpler terms, he says, is a workplace that produces – and keeps employee safety at the forefront.
“What matters to us is fostering the kind of safer working environment that improves the lives and safety of our workers. The SOH program does that by empowering the employee to identify hazards and provide input for improvements to workplace safety,” said Gustafson.
This collaborative approach implemented throughout TACOM’s industrial sites has resulted in a culture that proactively works to mitigate potential issues. This, in turn, has created an award-winning and safer work environment across the command. TACOM and its depots and arsenals have received the highest level of recognition from the Secretary of the Army several times over the past decade.
Anniston Army Depot: Setting records for safety
Anniston Army Depot was awarded the 2025 U.S. Army Materiel Command Industrial Operations Safety Award for “exceptional achievement in the administration of its SOH program.” The official citation, signed by AMC Commanding General Lt. Gen. Christopher O. Mohan, notes that the depot’s safety team went above and beyond safety standards“ by using innovative ways to protect against hazards, which is a testament to their overall commitment to workplace safety.”
ANAD Commander Col. Charles Moore emphasized that this recognition was the result of the entire ANAD workforce’s joint effort to foster safety while producing for the warfighter.
“Our team earned this award by implementing innovative, proactive measures to identify and mitigate hazards across our industrial operations,” Moore said. “Their ingenuity has set the standard across Army Materiel Command. Every employee plays a role in safety and together, as the ‘Pit Crew of the American Warfighter,’ ANAD will continue to lead the way in industrial safety and mission readiness.”
According to ANAD Safety Chief Rob Cunningham, this success was attributed to implementing several best practices, including having safety specialists conduct periodic inspections of production and shop areas. But as an example of how ANAD attempted to more fully integrate safety, those specialists didn’t just conduct inspections – they also worked to “develop relationships with supervisors to assist them and us identify and correct hazards.” The result?
“Record-low injury incidents,” said Cunningham, “driven by support from employees, supervisors, management along with TACOM Safety.”
Red River Army Depot: Measurable results for a safer workforce
Red River Army Depot earned the U.S. Army Materiel Command Exceptional Organization Safety Award at the brigade level. Similarly to ANAD, the depot’s citation praised its “innovative ways to protect against hazards,” which resulted in injury rates measurably lower than industry averages.
The safety record speaks for itself. Between 2021 and 2024, the depot earned the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Super Star Award, an honor for worksites with injury rates at least 75% below industry averages. During that period, RRAD’s Total Case Incident Rate and Lost Time Case Rate were 81% and 85% lower, respectively, than comparable private-industry benchmarks. In fiscal year 2025, the depot reported an impressive TCIR of 1.2 while completing more than 2.5 million work hours with zero Class A or Class B accidents.
RRAD Commander Col. Denis Fajardo attributed this performance to employees taking safety to heart.
“Our safety performance is a direct result of our team’s dedication to doing the job safely every single day,” Fajardo said. “Achieving injury rates far below industry averages isn’t luck; it is the product of a culture built on caring for our people, safeguarding our mission and delivering world-class production for the Soldier.”
Sierra Army Depot: Individual and organizational recognition
Sierra Army Depot was recognized with not just one, but two separate honors for the FY25 competition. The command received the TACOM Exceptional Organization Safety Award at the battalion level, while Rachel Lapp, a SIAD supply technician, was awarded the AMC Individual Award for Excellence in Safety – Junior Department of the Army Civilian.
The award specifically recognized Lapp’s contributions to worksite safety during a voluntary detail with the Safety Office. In just four months, she conducted a highly detailed Job Hazard Analysis audit of more than 35 work centers, single-handedly reviewing over 246 such audits, assigning 172 corrective actions andsubmitting190 tracking reports. Her meticulous work also identified over a dozen processes not previously captured by JHAs.
“A strong safety culture is not a program managed from an office,” Lapp said, “but conversations that live on the front lines. … It’s the daily habit of looking out for one another, where ‘watch your back’ becomes ‘I’ve got your back.’”
The depot as a whole was recognized for cultivating a culture where operational success and employee well-being are intrinsically linked. SIAD Commander Lt. Col. Shivnesh Kumar praised the workforce’s focus on driving safety and massively reducing combined injury incidents over the past few years.
“I am proud to serve in an organization that is safety-focused,” Kumar said. “Efforts led by employees like Ms. Rachel Lapp… show a 75% overall reduction in combined injury and incidents since February 2023.
“In addition, employees and supervisors like her, depot-wide, have prioritized the safety of our workforce, demonstrating a continuously improving safety culture that has resulted in a 25.5% reduction in injury and incidents over the past three years.”
Notably, SIAD’s achievements are pushed not only from the top-down, but by engaged local employees themselves. The SIAD employee-led Safety Committee injects invaluable “boots-on-the-ground” experience into the command’s dialog on safety. The development of an Executive Corrective Action Review Board dashboard led to a 161% increase in the closure of safety tasks last year. This commitment to safety enabled teams like the Defense Logistics Agency-Disposition ServicesAJ1 Receiving team to handle materials valued at over $233 million in 2025 without a single incident.
For leaders at every level, these awards reflect a validation of TACOM’s continuous focus on safety. As Gustafson noted, the ultimate objective is to marry safety with producing for Soldiers in a way that maximizes employee health and gets needed parts into the hands of Soldiers across the world.
“We shouldn’t see safety as a constraint to performance,” he said, “rather, focusing on safety gives leaders and the workforce the confidence to work on the edge of performance safely, and do their best for our Soldiers.”