Product Life Cycle
Reducing the impact National Instruments has on the environment begins with its supply chain and product design. NI looks for opportunities to improve product development and manufacturing processes, including packaging design. NI also strives to remove harmful substances from existing products and prohibits the introduction of known harmful substances into new products. In addition, through a product recycling program, customers can send their old NI products back to be recycled.
Year in Review
2011 Highlights
Created a packaging lab at NI headquarters to help design, test, and research packaging solutions
Reduced polyurethane foam used in packaging by 24%
Set a new manufacturing safety record of 664 consecutive days without an injury
2011 Challenges
Increasing employee turnover in the safety group at NI Hungary
Receiving more orders than expected for a product that uses more polyurethane than others, causing more usage than planned
2012 Commitments
Identify potential hazards for manufacturing tasks, assess the risks of those hazards, and develop hazard controls based on the level of risk
Develop corporate responsibility metrics for suppliers to start tracking in 2013
Reduce polyurethane foam used in packaging by 15% per unit
Members of the kitting and packaging team at NI Hungary discuss ways they have saved shipping costs by increasing packaging efficiency. View the video
Oliver Murphy
Group Manager, Packaging Engineering at National Instruments
As the packaging engineering group manager, Oliver Murphy must find ways to optimize packaging to lower costs and conserve resources. His group has made many improvements to the design of NI product packaging with the launch of a packaging design and test lab in 2011. They can now create packaging prototypes internally and then test them to see how the packaging holds up to the rigors of shipping. “Having an in-house lab gives us the capability to evaluate new technologies and sustainable materials,” he said. “A primary goal of our global team is to constantly be on the lookout for more eco-friendly materials to use in our designs, and the lab gives us the ability to bring these greener materials in house and create designs to determine feasibility.”