How Dover Innovates for Sustainable Products
Our product management and research and development (R&D) teams lead innovation and sustainable product development. R&D efforts are led by our individual operating companies to be more market-focused and better serve our loyal customers. To identify opportunities for developing new products, product management and R&D teams regularly engage with our customers to assess ways we can help them achieve their business and sustainability objectives. These efforts are complemented with internal analysis of potential opportunities and unmet market needs.
In 2021, four of Dover's largest Operating Companies by emissions participated in workshops to formally integrate sustainability into the product development stage-gate process. Workshop participants developed definitions and thresholds for six different sustainable product categories and were encouraged to use the thresholds when designing new products or refining existing products.
Sustainable product categories:
- Advances clean technology
- Significantly improves customer resource use
- Advances the circular economy
- Facilitates safer work environments
- Eliminates harmful chemicals from customer use
- Decreases embodied emissions and water
In 2022, Dover's largest Operating Companies by emissions plan to focus on product use phase emission reduction initiatives and integrate checkpoints focusing on opportunities to reduce product energy usage into new product development to set a path towards achieving Dover's 2030 Scope 3 science-based target. For more information on Dover’s science-based target, see our Energy and Emissions webpage.
In 2020, R&D spend, including qualifying engineering costs, represented 2.1% of our annual revenue, and our average R&D spend as a percentage of annual revenue has been steadily increasing since 2014 when it was 1.5% of annual revenue. We increased our R&D spend partly in response to customer needs for more efficient, safer, and sustainable products. Ultimately, we view R&D as critical to maintaining the long-term growth and competitiveness of our offerings in the marketplace in a world with an ever-increasing demand for more sustainable solutions.