Mastering precision requires the best protection. This is the credo of Focal, the world's leading French brand in the manufacture of high-fidelity audio systems. Located in La Talaudière, in the Loire region, the company designs and develops solutions to combine innovation and tradition. In the production factories, its operators need the best in PPE to face the risks. Helmets, gloves, masks... The teams use and test Coverguard protective equipment solutions on a daily basis. Meet Julie Sablonière, a QSE technician committed to protecting the health of her employees.
What are the activities of your company?
Julie Sablonière: For more than 40 years,Focal has been manufacturing acoustic equipment for a wide range of markets such as floorstanding hi-fi, integrated and home cinema speakers for the home, headphones, speakers for cars and boats, and monitoring speakers for professional recording studios. Our core business is loudspeakers and hi-fi speakers. Our products benefit from exclusive innovations and technologies developed by our engineers in France. In our production workshops in La Talaudière (Loire) and in our cabinet making workshop in Bourbon-Lancy (Burgundy), we combine know-how, craftsmanship and state-of-the-art techniques in the service of audio, which has earned Focal the distinction of being one of France's "Entreprises du Patrimoine Vivant" (EPV) and recognized worldwide. This is a real pride for us.
What are the requirements and risks to which these activities expose your teams on a daily basis?
Julie Sablonière: Focal design is a true tradition of performance that requires mastery of all stages, from creation to control, in order to offer quality products. To ensure this precision, our production is partially automated because several operations require human know-how. Therefore, the main risks faced by our employees, and to which we are particularly vigilant, are burns, chemical splashes and inhalations, and falls from the ground.
"Coverguard PPE protects our employers, while optimizing their work comfort, which is a plus in efficiency."
What COVERGUARD protective equipment solutions do you use?
Julie Sablonière : We use 3 categories of Coverguard products at our production site: - MX340, acoustic ear muffs, mainly for maintenance work, -1NIDP precision gloves and 1CUPC00 anti-cutting gloves for the stages on the production lines, - the ETNA cartridge mask with filters for use in our paint booths.
These products are currently being tested. They protect our staff in the missions they are entrusted with, while optimizing their working comfort, which is a real plus in terms of efficiency.
What do you like about Coverguard?
Julie Sablonière : The Coverguard teams are experts in their field and are attentive to our needs. They advise us on the products according to the specificities of our activities in order to improve the working conditions of our teams while maintaining the level of protection already in place at the risk positions.
We also wish to work with Coverguard in our cabinet making workshop located in Bourbon Lancy (Burgundy). This second site manufactures the wooden enclosures for our loudspeakers, which involves numerous work stages, from machining to finishing. The risks associated with this workshop and its activity are different from those of the La Talaudière site, which will allow us to test other Coverguard product ranges. It's very interesting!
