Emerging Leader in Manufacturing – Kristin Hanson
Kristin leads nVent’s North American strategic sourcing team. Her strong negotiation and leadership skills have helped nVent realize significant material productivity savings, allowing us to reinvest in our business. Kristin also achieved 100% retention of her team within the past 12 months amid a very competitive labor market. This stability enabled her to bring process improvements to the sourcing organization.
Kristin strives to grow the next generation of female talent in strategic sourcing. Whether someone is interested in joining her team or another function, Kristin is willing to sit down and share her experiences. Nearly two-thirds of her team is made up of women, and for many of these employees, Kristin has provided support in promotional growth opportunities. A female employee who has shifted functional groups and been promoted within the past two years shared that she “loves the culture and the clear career path” on Kristin’s team.
Kristin mentors other women as an active member of our Global Women’s Network employee resource group. She never hesitates to reach out to women in need and always is willing to share her experiences and advice. Kristin is a strong believer in the power of women supporting each other and is committed to creating a more inclusive and equitable workplace.
Product Innovation – RDHX Pro
The growth of AI and high-performance computing is driving a need for better data center infrastructure. A key part of that infrastructure is cooling. High-performance chips generate a lot of heat when they operate so they need to be cooled constantly. The new nVent Rear Door Heat Exchanger (RDHX) Pro represents an important technological leap in driving efficiency, scalability and sustainability for high-performance computing technology.
As data centers come under more scrutiny for their power use, using more efficient cooling technology is an important way to minimize data centers’ environmental impact. Data centers can spend less energy on cooling technology as they become more efficient, which reduces overall energy use. This also allows data centers to scale the amount of IT they can support without dramatically increasing the power they use on cooling. Even more efficient than air cooling, liquid cooling transfers heat from servers to cooled liquid lines, a method rapidly growing in popularity among data center managers.
RDHX Pro uses liquid cooling technology in combination with existing air cooling infrastructure to create an efficiently cooled environment at the server rack level rather than by cooling an entire room.
The RDHX Pro fits in the place of a server rack back door and uses fans to pull hot air out from the server rack across cooled liquid coils in the door before it circulates back into the room. RDHX Pro brings this rear-door cooling technology to racks with up to 78 kW high-density racks, (at 14°C /57°F) meeting the requirements for the growing use of AI-enhanced applications, demands for higher energy efficiency and sustainability, and the need for greater data center space utilization.
This solution is also very scalable and easy to service. Because data centers are regulating IT heat with cooling at the rack level instead of the room level, data center managers can install more RDHX units where they need them, cooling only the areas where they have active IT instead of cooling an entire room wherever IT is present. At 281mm with fans and 241mm without fans, RDHX Pro is the slimmest rear door cooler in the industry. The fans on the door, the touch screen control, and the power supply units all can be swapped out without turning off the unit, which is extremely important for an industry where 24/7 uptime is the standard.
We are excited that the innovations of our product teams are being recognized for their impacts in high-growth verticals, and we congratulate Kristin and thank her for her meaningful contributions to nVent. Congratulations! Read the full list of awardees here.