Miller supplies products and educates customers on best practices to enhance worker safety.

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With a name synonymous with height safety, Miller® brand products have protected individuals working at heights in a wide range of industries, including wind power, utilities, construction, petro­chemical and other general industries for more than 60 years.

The brand is known in many industries and markets as a pioneer and innovator of quality fall protection and confined space products, engineered fall arrest solutions and training services, according to Doug Mercier, vice president of global strategic marketing for the Miller brand’s Safety at Height Division.

“In our business, due to the fact that working at heights is a very high-risk environment, any mistake could be fatal or result in serious injuries due to wrong product selection and improper training,” he says. “We have a tremendous focus on quality and seek to manufacture and market high-performance products and services.

“While the global economic crisis continues to loom over every business, it is vitally important that we focus on educating markets on best practices and develop products and services that enhance worker safety,” Mercier adds. “The rapidly growing wind power industry presents a variety of safety challenges for those working at heights.  

“However, whether in turbine construction, maintenance or rescue and evacuation, providing safety at height solutions that enhance worker safety, comfort, trust and increased productivity has been our expertise since 1945.”

Customer Intimacy
A key facet that differentiates Miller Fall Protection from its competitors is the brand’s willingness to stay connected with its customer base. “We try to get very close to the end-user,” Mercier says. “In the wind power industry, we work closely with the engineers and safety directors involved in designing the turbines, and try to make sure we are accommodating their safety needs, including training.

“That’s where the intimacy comes in,” he continues. “Miller Safety at Height is very innovative because we are constantly seeking customer feedback and using that information to develop innovative solutions engineered specifically to their needs. We are a multinational company, and our core values are spread throughout the world.”

Brand of Innovation
Mercier says the Miller brand is represented by several patents for innovative product design, such as the Miller DuraFlex® harness with stretchable webbing for greater comfort, increased worker productivity and improved safety; as well as the BackBiter® shock-absorbing tie-back lanyard and Miller 5K® locking snap hook with 5,000-pound gate capacity from any angle.

Other patent-pending products include the Miller Revolution™ harness, featuring the unique PivotLink™ rotary design for greater mobility and comfort; and the compact and lightweight Miller TurboLite™ personal fall limiter with an internal shock-absorbing braking system that arrests a fall to inches. The company’s commitment to product quality, innovation and customer intimacy separates it from the competition, according to Mercier.

Expansive Growth
To trace the company’s history and the many changes impacting the safety at height business, one must go back to when Miller was founded in the mid-1940s. In the earlier years, Miller provided climbing products and tools for local electrical utility workers. Until the 1980s, this was the firm’s primary market focus.

However, the company then expanded into the construction and general industry market segments. “We spread our wings and had tremendous growth in our business due to the fact that construction started to take worker safety on the jobsite very seriously,” Mercier says.

At this point, Miller was now a part of WGM Safety Corp., a producer of personal protection equipment, including safety eyewear, hearing and respiratory protection. In 1989, the Christian Dalloz Group of France purchased WGM and became an international leader in personal protection equipment.

Under the new leadership of its European parent, the Miller brand of fall protection products began to expand geographically through acquisitions in Europe and Australia. In 2001, Christian Dalloz Group merged with European safety product giant, Bacou Group, which was a leading manufacturer of Uvex® safety eyewear, Howard Leight™ hearing protection, respiratory and hand protection products. As a result of the merger, the Bacou-Dalloz Group was the No. 1. world market share provider of personal protective equipment, with operations in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates. In 2007, it changed its name to Sperian Protection Inc. to create a unified identity and to streamline its expansion goals.  

“In 2008, we acquired Musitani, a fall protection manufacturer in Argentina, and also opened operations in Brazil to expand our reach into the South American market,” Mercier explains. “Recently, we also acquired Combisafe, a European-based operation that allowed us to expand into an adjacent safety product category. Today, we are able to offer personal, as well as collective protection systems which can be found at most construction sites or in an environment where you have a guardrail or fall prevention system.”

With production facilities and sales offices on all major continents, Mercier says the Miller and Combisafe brands continue to build strength as a global force by setting the standard in user-focused safety at height solutions.