Four­ni­val Altesse has been design­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing hair­brush­es for 150 years. The com­pa­ny, employ­ing around 40 peo­ple with its long-estab­lished know-how, called on UTC to rethink cer­tain process­es in order to improve safe­ty, com­fort and productivity.

‘We were con­tact­ed a year and a half ago by Annick Fla­haut, project man­ag­er at Four­ni­val Altesse; she want­ed to mech­a­nise a very spe­cif­ic process. In one part of their process, employ­ees man­u­al­ly attach­ing the bris­tles to the hair­brush. As the com­pa­ny’s pro­duc­tion vol­umes are increas­ing, it needs to mech­a­nise the process in order to keep pace and make the work eas­i­er for its employ­ees,” explains Erwann Guénin, uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor at UTC in the Depart­ment of Process Engi­neer­ing and in the Inte­grat­ed Renew­able Mate­ri­als Pro­cess­ing Lab­o­ra­to­ry (UTC-TIMR), who called on Nico­las Piton, head of the pro­to­typ­ing plat­form in the Socio- Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ships and Entre­pre­neur­ship Depart­ment (DPSEE) at UTC. “Togeth­er, we sug­gest­ed that the com­pa­ny study the process and devel­op a pro­to­type. This study was car­ried out joint­ly with stu­dents from the Depart­ment of Mechan­i­cal and Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing (DME) and the Depart­ment of Mechan­i­cal and Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing (DME). entre­pre­neur­ship (DPSEE) depart­ment at UTC. “Togeth­er, we offered to study the process and devel­op a pro­to­type for the com­pa­ny. This study was car­ried out in a com­bined man­ner with stu­dents in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, process engi­neer­ing and Mas­ter’s in for­mu­lat­ed prod­ucts engi­neer­ing dur­ing intern­ships, the sot­called “PR, TZ and TX” cours­es at UTC with the sup­port of super­vis­ing lec­tur­ers. This pro­to­type made it pos­si­ble to test the process of dip­ping the brush heads in their cas­settes to obtain the bris­tles at the ends of the nylon strands. Tatiana Cam­poamor, an Argen­tin­ian Mas­ter’s stu­dent, worked on the chem­i­cal process involv­ing the resin used to coat the small end of the nylon, which is there to make the brush more com­fort­able to use. It can be used on wet or dry hair and also mas­sages the scalp and improves blood cir­cu­la­tion. “It’s a per­son­al chal­lenge for me, first­ly because I’ve only been in France for two and a half years. I did­n’t speak any French at all. And I’m real­ly hap­py to have come to UTC and to be work­ing with a com­pa­ny that does such high-qual­i­ty work. Then there was the chal­lenge of work­ing with resin for the bead­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly the soak­ing and dry­ing times, since the vis­cos­i­ty changes over time.’

From prototype to industrial production

Four­ni­val Altesse has cus­tomers all over the world, par­tic­u­lar­ly in East­ern Europe. It works on its own brands, but also for pri­vate labels. “We had the idea of con­tact­ing UTC because we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have the required skills in-house. We have age-old know-how that we want to pre­serve, so we thought we would share this with UTC so that they could bring a fresh per­spec­tive on automa­tion and help us find new process­es while retain­ing our exper­tise. We are more than sat­is­fied with the result. The stu­dents worked very well,” says Annick Fla­haut, project man­ag­er at Four­ni­val Altesse. The next step will be to indus­tri­alise the process with­in three months. This is one of the tasks of Ambroise Favre, engi­neer by train­ing and head of pro­duc­tion and indus­tri­al per­for­mance. “We are for­tu­nate to have a wide vari­ety of arti­sanal process­es, but we need to rethink some of them. It’s about tak­ing a man­u­al process with a lot of added val­ue and try­ing to trans­form it, to devel­op it to improve safe­ty for oper­a­tors, prod­uct qual­i­ty and vol­ume. And that’s exact­ly why we called on UTC. With this pro­to­type, we now have real proof of con­cept. It’s up to us to make it what we want it to be and turn it into a real indus­tri­al machine. But we already have oth­er projects and requests for UTC.” » 

KD