Products & Supply Chain
Product Stewardship
Taking Responsibility for Our Products
Every product contains a promise. The people who make, buy or use any product — from a car to a can of soda — trust that the manufacturer has taken their needs into consideration. Not just their stated requirements for increased speed or better taste, but deeper needs for personal safety and social consciousness.
ITT provides a diverse range of products from tiny electronic connectors to enormous radar arrays. In all cases, we are striving to live up to the promise by delivering products that are engineered for life.
Our Commitment:
To recognize the impact our products have on people and the environment during their life cycle — from their manufacture to the end of their useful life — and invest in research and development initiatives to reduce our products' overall ecological impact while continually improving safety.
Progress to Date:
Since 2006, design centers representing more than 99 percent of ITT's product sales, as well as key suppliers, have taken part in a new product safety training program and, where necessary, have made improvements to product designs, instructions or warning labels. As part of our Value-Based Product Development process, we review product lines against applicable regulations, including the Restriction on Hazardous Substances and Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment initiatives intended to reduce the amount of hazardous electronic waste, or e-waste, ending up in landfills.
Goals for 2008/2009:
To increase our focus on end-of-life issues — with a focus on recycling — for all our product lines. To complete deployment of product safety training at remaining ITT legacy design centers, as well as all new centers resulting from the acquisitions of International Motion Control and EDO Corporation.
ITT's investment in research, development and engineering (RD&E) — which includes exploration of product safety, reliability and recyclability issues — has increased 50 percent over the past two years.
Improving Product Safety
As part of the ITT Product Safety Policy introduced in 2005, product safety review boards are active at all major ITT design centers around the globe. These review teams use a variety of tools to review new and legacy products-conducting operating hazard analyses, ranking the risks of the products, creating safety profiles and, if necessary, changing the design or providing appropriate warnings and instructions for safe use and disposal of the products.
The review boards assure that new products are launched with the latest safety and environmental considerations inherent in their design, and that legacy products are not only compliant to regional standards but continuously improved. This process includes random periodic testing of parts from our global supply base in high-risk areas (for example lead content in paint) to ensure conformance to our specifications and environmental standards.
As a result, our products continue to improve. When we developed a new low-cost water disinfection system for emerging markets, the design team found a way to build in the same safety features found on our more complex systems, including reduced chemical use, leak protection and a failure alarm.
By mid-2008, 45 out of ITT's 56 design centers around the globe completed safety reviews of legacy products. The remaining 11 centers represent less than $1.5 million of ITT's product sales and will complete their reviews by year-end 2008.
A Focus on End-of-Life Issues
At ITT, product responsibility doesn't end when an item is delivered to the customer. They may own the product, but we have a responsibility for providing engineering excellence and maintenance service to increase durability, and designing products so that when they do wear out, they don't burden our already over-burdened landfills and waste systems.
The majority of ITT's products-including military hardware, heavy duty industrial or municipal pumps, mixers and treatment equipment-have product life cycles of 15 to 30 years.
Customers can add even more useful life to our Fluid Technology products through reconditioning and repair services offered at our ProService centers. For our larger pumps, even after their long, useful life, the cast metal parts can be recycled and the large motors reconditioned to provide service for a new product lifetime.
The very small share of ITT products with life cycles of less than five years are moving to readily recyclable materials — generally plastics — for the bulk of their product design. When recyclable materials aren't an option, we look for other creative ways to keep ITT products out of the waste stream.
Our recent winning proposal to revamp America's air traffic control system features existing cell phone towers — no new construction-as part of the solution. And when we developed a disposable railcar shock absorber to help customers counter the high cost of workshop repairs, we also provided a collection service. We will collect the used shocks from customers and then recycle the steel, plastics and rubber, and responsibly dispose of the oils and fluids.
In 2007, we completely eliminated the use of heavy metals such as cadmium and lead in our brake pad and backplate operation.
Responsible Products from ITT
- We enhanced our Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS) battlefield radios to increase soldier safety. Through a simple software upgrade accomplished during routine maintenance checks, hundreds of thousands of ITT radios in the field will be able to be fitted with Radio Based Combat Identification. When contacted by coalition aircraft, the upgraded radios respond automatically — with no work required by the soldier. In this way, the U.S. military can better track the exact location of soldiers on the battlefield and avoid friendly fire casualties.
- Our popular Model 3196 Goulds process pump — for handling chemicals and harsh liquids — now comes standard with i-FRAME, an onboard pump intelligence system that provides early warning of potential problems. With this flashing light system, every employee in the plant can help spot problems and prevent system failures.
- Our line of servo motors was redesigned to be compliant with the European Union RoHS directive, which stands for the Restriction of Hazardous Substances in electrical and electronic equipment. The motors, which are used in a variety of applications from medical imaging to industrial operations, now feature lead-free solder and RoHS-compliant circuit boards.
