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Coats and the Journey to Zero: How Intelex Supports a Global Safety Culture
Coats is a global leader in thread manufacturing and structural components for apparel and footwear, with a growing footprint in performance materials. Headquartered in the UK and listed on the FTSE250, Coats employs more than 17,000 people across six continents. The company’s origins date back to the 18th century in Paisley, Scotland, where the Clark and Coats families laid the foundation for what would become one of the most enduring names in the textile industry.
Today, Coats is known not only for its products—ranging from conventional apparel threads to safety-critical materials like automotive airbags and hot air balloons—but also for its commitment to sustainability, innovation, and operational excellence. As part of its mission to connect talent, textiles, and technology, Coats has embedded a global safety culture through its "Journey to Zero" strategy, prioritizing the health and wellbeing of its global workforce and driving continuous improvement across all operations. The company turned to Intelex’s EHS software for manufacturing to help support this mission at scale.
Impact
- +55% increase in improvement actions completed.
- +89% increase in corrective actions closed within 30 days (from 39%).
- +36% increase in hazard reporting rate.
- +33% increase in near-miss reporting rate.
- -35% reduction in work-related incident rate.
- -10% reduction in first-aid incident rate.
Outcome
By implementing Intelex, Coats achieved a significant transformation in its global safety performance, marked by increased hazard and near-miss reporting, faster corrective action closure, and a measurable reduction in work-related incidents. The platform enabled real-time visibility, standardized processes, and greater employee engagement across all sites, allowing Coats to shift from reactive reporting to proactive safety management.
Intelex’s EHS software for manufacturing played a critical role in helping Coats align its safety efforts globally, while also adapting to the unique needs of each site. This cultural and operational shift not only supported the company’s Journey to Zero strategy but also positioned Coats for long-term resilience and continuous improvement.
The Challenge for Coats
As a global organization with over 17,000 employees across diverse geographies, Coats faced significant challenges in maintaining a consistent and proactive safety culture. Data collection and reporting were time-consuming and prone to error, relying heavily on manual processes at both site and corporate levels. This made it difficult to get timely, accurate insights into safety performance across the business.
More critically, Coats recognized that technology alone couldn’t solve their safety challenges. The company needed to empower employees to take ownership of safety by making it easy to report hazards and incidents—without adding administrative burden or relying solely on health and safety professionals. Driving cultural change across global sites required a system that could scale, standardize processes, and provide real-time visibility into performance and risks.
“The use of Intelex to record, alert and track each of these in a structured workflow has been a major part of the success of this program. Key to this has been having Coats employees working directly with the Intelex tool so that the H&S professionals do not become the system administrators.”
Andrew Morgan, Group Health and Safety Director, Coats
"Incident Management has helped us reduce the amount of single-paged documents created for each incident, and it has completely eliminated the spreadsheets we maintained for tracking actions.”
Andrew Morgan, Group Health and Safety Director, Coats
" The leading and lagging indicator dashboards that we set up in the system allow users at multiple levels of the organisation to track their performance and rapidly identify any areas of concern. They are used continuously.”
Andrew Morgan, Group Health and Safety Director, Coats
How Intelex Helped Coats
To support its global Journey to Zero strategy, Coats implemented Intelex to standardize safety workflows and improve visibility across its global operations. The platform replaced manual data collection and spreadsheets with automated, structured processes for reporting incidents, tracking corrective actions, and managing hazards.
By adopting applications such as Incident Management, Behavior-Based Safety, and environmental modules like Compliance Tracking and Permits Management, Coats streamlined its safety operations and aligned them with its broader sustainability goals.
Intelex also played a key role in strengthening safety culture at the frontline. Employees across sites were empowered to report hazards and incidents directly, reducing the administrative load on health and safety teams and encouraging active participation. Real-time dashboards and automated alerts gave leadership immediate insight into safety performance, helping to drive accountability and early intervention.
As a configurable EHS software for manufacturing, Intelex also enabled Coats to adapt safety processes to local contexts while maintaining a consistent global strategy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the system’s flexibility proved critical, allowing for rapid development of custom forms and tracking tools to manage emerging health risks.