Sustainable Product Development
Sustainable by Design
We believe that adapting existing manufacturing processes to consider sustainability criteria can be difficult and may result in only marginal improvements. In late 2021, we launched a new Novanta-wide approach to product development, called “New Product Innovation Toolbox” that aims to take sustainability into account from the requirements definition stage to the commercial launch of the product. For example, all of our projects begin with templates for systematically capturing stakeholder and system requirements. This set of templates now includes a mandatory sustainability requirements checklist. Similarly, during the validation stage, product prototypes must be checked against those initial requirements lists to confirm that they meet all listed needs. New product development will focus on material reduction, energy efficiency, transportation methods, packaging concepts, and recycling to make products more sustainable.
The process for developing the toolbox has been highly collaborative, involving sponsorship from the R&D Council, an internal collaboration platform with the participation of R&D leaders from multiple business units, and input from product development experts across Novanta. We will continue to roll out these new sustainable product development processes and tools across Novanta in 2022 and beyond.
