Innovation

The world’s first cut-protection masterclass

Decades of experience, expertise and insights bundled in a 5-min cut-protection masterclass that will hopefully make all the difference for you, your workforce’s safety and your business continuity.

Surely gloves have always had grip, so how can this be a new thing? The answer to these questions is to do with the type of grip, the way it’s delivered and the additional benefits it brings. As any tyre manufacture will tell you, power is nothing without grip. Grip has to be optimised for the surface condition of the road or track and gloves are no different.

Cut resistance

Often the response to recurring cut injuries is to introduce gloves with higher levels of cut resistance. However, increasing the cut resistance often treats the effect, i.e. cuts, rather than the cause of the issue, i.e. movement. After all, it’s the movement of what the hand is holding that frequently cuts the glove. Simply put, if it doesn’t slip then it cannot cut. Used correctly, a glove with a lower cut score and the right level of grip can be as effective, if not more effective than a glove with a higher cut rating and ineffective grip. Using thinner gloves will also increase worker acceptance through better comfort.

IF IT DOESN’T SLIP, IT CANNOT CUT.

John Taylor, Chairman ATG

Worker comfort

Worker comfort is always one of the first things people consider when selecting or trying on a glove. Is it comfortable? Does it offer the needed dexterity, flexibility and tactility? Gloves that offer more cut resistance are frequently more bulky, working against the other metrics. It’s a question of protection versus comfort. It’s fundamental to get this right, since bulky gloves will be taken off for precision-handling tasks leaving bare hands exposed to the risk of a cut. This is why many case studies conclude that using gloves with a higher cut resistance will not necessarily reduce the injury frequency rate (IFR).

Hand fatigue

Have you ever clenched your fist 100 times? If you have, then you’ll know that at the outset it’s easy but towards the end it becomes more difficult. This fatigue is similar to when your hand lifts and holds something over and over again. Why? Because it has to apply force and force needs energy. It’s no different for workers using their hands professionally. With glove grip enhanced by just 5%, the dry lift increases from 24kg (bare hand) to 25.26kg (gloved hand). At ATG®, we like to think of it another way. Rather than being able to lift an extra 1.26kg with an optimized grip, we say that only 2.38kg of force is required to lift 1kg instead of 2.5kg, and these small differences over a working day, week, month and year(s) can make a significant difference.

HAND FATIGUE IS CAUSED BY APPLYING FORCE AND FORCE NEEDS ENERGY

Time for change?

We at ATG® believe so. People have been poorly served and come to accept that coated cut-resistant gloves are PU. We were inspired to develop something totally new within the cut sector based on the core values of MaxiFlex®, creating the world’s first game-changing biomimetic cut-resistant glove, MaxiFlex® Cut™.

The outsourcing of manufacturing is part and parcel of almost every business nowadays, so much so that consumers expect it. However, what about a world where you know exactly who has made each item you buy and where it came from? That’s a world that ATG believes in and why we prefer to swim against the tide rather than going with the outsourcing flow.

In an industry driven by outsourcing, ATG® is and always has been a traditional manufacturer that uses the very latest technologies to deliver class-leading gloves. We do everything ourselves and guarantee that nothing is outsourced.

Zero Outsourcing

We see many benefits in producing our own gloves. However, in this article we’ll focus on the most important one: control.

Control of what exactly?

• Control of R&D development
• Control of new product transition from R&D to production
• Control of intellectual property
• Control of quality
• Control of conformity to legislation
• Control of the way the people who make our products are  treated

The list goes on; however, it always comes back to that one thing: control. In a world of outsourcing, people tell us more and more that they want to be sure that they are dealing with the manufacturer and not a brand that they then find is available from a number of vendors and is undoubtedly outsourced. So where does it all start?

Research and Development

We just keep it simple by integrating our R&D facilities into the heart of our production facilities to ensure that the ideas and the technology behind our gloves as developed by R&D are not lost when they are transferred to our production lines. This simple approach also enhances the collaboration between our production and development teams, and encourages faster knowledge exchange, which leads to efficient research and dramatically shortens the development cycle of each new product or product improvement.

Making gloves is Like putting a jigsaw together. There are so many parts that need to be interconnected with one another to solve the puzzle, and making gloves is no different.

John Taylor, Chairman ATG

The Drive for Knowledge and expertise

It doesn’t just happen within ATG, as we actively collaborate with leading universities, specialised industries as well as with industry experts. This is one of the reasons why ATG is able to stay at the forefront of the latest developments and scientific breakthroughs in the industry. We design and develop gloves that perfectly match our users’ needs of today and tomorrow. By providing them with not just another glove, but with a totally new glove experience, we’re able to guarantee to every user optimum safety, comfort and cleanliness.

Beyond Legislation

Glove cleanliness is something ATG® takes very seriously. It’s important for the environment, our employees who produce our gloves and, of course, those who wear our gloves. With legislation becoming more demanding and more technical, we feel the best way to guarantee compliance is by producing products in-house. The REACH legislation that came into effect in June 2007 is an excellent example. Totalling 849 pages, it has been described as the most complete and most complex legislation regulating chemical substances. Having full ownership of the technology behind and within our gloves also enabled us to gain dermatological accreditation through a partnership with the Skin Health Alliance (SHA), giving, for the first time within the safety industry, professional glove users the confidence that our full range of gloves is dermatologically safe as the science and research behind our gloves are robust.

Quality

Quality is not something that we check at the end of the production line. Rather, it is integrated into our facilities from the start of the process to the end. This is achieved by quality teams and quality champions who monitor production and make corrective actions as part of their daily job.

By using such an approach, quality has become woven into the fabric and culture of the company. This is formally expressed through ISO 9001 accreditation, which we, like many companies, use as a framework to help us to deliver consistently high-quality gloves. In combination with ISO 14001, it enables us to make our manufacturing operations more efficient with low levels of waste whilst being mindful of the environment in which we operate.

Bringing It Altogether

It is the responsibility and combined effort of the many teams that work within the supply chain to seamlessly design, develop, produce, distribute, educate and support. In an industry driven by outsourcing, ATG® is and always has been a traditional manufacturer that uses the very latest technologies to deliver class-leading gloves. We do everything ourselves and guarantee that nothing is outsourced.