For most companies it is a daily challenge to ensure safe and compliant transportation of dangerous goods / hazardous materials. As a first step it might already cause problems to analyze the product portfolio and identify all dangerous goods. It often remains undiscovered that lithium batteries, which are used in a lot of electronic devices like laptops, cameras, cell phones, medical equipment or even giveaways like a LED torch or a USB charger battery, have to be classified as dangerous goods.
Challenges with Lithium batteries
Lithium batteries can overheat and catch fire. These fires are difficult to put out and can produce toxic and irritating fumes. Transport accidents of lithium batteries have produced negative headlines over and over again for example batteries in laptops have heated up and caused fire on planes. Therefore they are generally subject to transport regulations, depending on the transport mode. Companies have to classify, pack and label all lithium batteries correctly.
UN Numbers
The updated Lithium Battery UN numbers are based on the Lithium Batteries classifications of the 15th edition of the UN recommendations on the transport of dangerous goods model regulations. This applies to both Air and RID/ADR/ADN transport as well as for several other regulations based on UN Model Regulations.
- UN NUMBER 3090: Lithium Metal Batteries (including Lithium alloy Batteries)
- UN NUMBER 3091: Lithium Metal Batteries contained in equipment or packed with equipment (including Lithium alloy Batteries)
- UN NUMBER 3480: Lithium Ion Batteries (including Lithium ion polymer Batteries)
- UN NUMBER 3481: Lithium Ion Batteries contained in equipment or packed with equipment (including Lithium ion polymer Batteries)
SAP’s solutions Dangerous Goods Management and Transportation Management
SAP’s solutions for Dangerous Goods Management and Transportation Management can help your company to ensure that dangerous goods /hazmat classified products like lithium batteries are packaged, transported and labeled according to the regulations. Especially for high volume operations with worldwide distribution, automation of dangerous goods classification, automated checks and generation of documents along the value chain becomes essential. SAP’s solution helps manufacturers protect revenue and ensure operational safety and legal compliance, by enabling real-time verification of shipment based on destination and transportation mode. Furthermore SAP offers a Regulatory Content packages which includes regulatory data for dangerous goods. With this package companies receive regular updates to support compliance with changing requirements and reduce corporate risk by propagating accurate, global compliance data globally. In order to ensure compliant shipments of lithium cells/batteries along the supply chain, protect revenue and brand value your company should consider to automate dangerous goods processes with the offered SAP solutions for safe and complaint transportation of dangerous goods.
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