Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) support you in managing business processes related to the safety of the environment and the health and safety of people. Environment Management enables you to plan the required activities for managing the compliance of your company with emission-related environmental regulations. Incident Management enables you to record and process incidents, safety observations, and near misses. You can report the data to internal and external stakeholders to fulfill legal, regulatory, and company reporting responsibilities. Environment, Health, and Safety enable you to assess and manage risks in your organization. You can take the appropriate actions necessary to reduce risk to acceptable levels and prevent any harmful effects on the health and safety of your employees and the environment.
In this blog series, I will give you an expert view, from product experts to product experts, of some selected highlights for the Environment, Health, and Safety of our SAP S/4HANA 2021 release. All these innovations will also be available for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition.
The blog is built as a series of 2 parts and present the key highlights for:
In this first blog, you can find information on functions that are used by Environment Management.
You can use material data in Environment, Health, and Safety processes, such as setting up compliance activities and managing environmental releases. Materials are represented by the newly created master data object - Chemical Compliance Info. It is a central object and serves as an integration point between the Environment, Health, and Safety and Product Compliance solutions.
You can choose if you want to use chemicals or materials in your EHS processes and switch between the objects as needed in customizing. The standard system is delivered with the Chemical Compliance Info object selected by default. The recommendation for the new customers is to start with the Chemical Compliance Info object. The possible switch is valid for Incident Management and Environment Management but not for Health and Safety solutions. The "old" Chemical object will be deprecated in the next releases. Health and Safety solution still depends on this object.
The apps Manage Material Data (F4864) app and Manage Substances Compliance (F2578) app can be further used to create materials and substances
Materials represent substances, a mixture of substances, or discrete products (such as lightbulbs) that are specific to a certain company and are physically available at the company's plant. Unlike listed substances (such as mercury, lead, ethyl acetate, benzene, toluene) that describe only the regulatory information available for a substance, materials (such as detergents) can be manufactured, traded, or procured.
Along with the other subjects that take part in the industry processes, when you ensure the environmental compliance and sustainability of your company, you must consider all specific materials too. Hence, the materials, similarly to the other subjects, play a major role in forming the environmental footprint of your company and are a critical prerequisite for the overall environmental management processes. In environment management, materials are used to:
To fulfill the scope of your environmentally-related business case, you can create materials. Later on, you can use materials in the following ways and processes:
If the substance that you want to assign is not yet available in the system, you can use the Manage Substances Compliance (F2578) app to create it and give it a company-specific name. This app supports the creation of a substance in the company's inventory, which enables the substance to be used in the analytical compositions that make up products and raw materials. These substances can be used later on in the definition of the analytical composition for materials with emission relevance.
Picture 1: SAP Fiori apps related to the master data management
With this feature, you can create new materials and manage their data in the Manage Material Data – Environment Management app. You can assign products (from the Product Master) to the selected material and manage its analytical composition and its physical-chemical properties, manage additional properties, manage waste codes, assign dangerous goods compliance purposes, and view and navigate to dangerous goods assessments. Once the material data is maintained, you can use the material in follow-on business processes, for example, you can set it as a subject in a sampling activity.
Maintain a composition of the Material object. Additionally, in Environment Management, you can use the created composition in calculations.
Picture 2: In the Analytical Composition section, the environmental manager can add substances to the analytical composition of the material.
Key Features
In the Analytical Composition section, the environmental manager can add substances to the analytical composition of the material.
Alternatively, if the substance is not yet available in the Environment Management system, the environmental manager can create it from the Manage Substances Compliance app.
The Analytical Composition section shared data with SAP Product Compliance.
With this feature, you can select properties from your chemical/physical properties list or create new properties to assign to a material. If you don't find a property to meet your requirements among the properties provided on the Default Properties tab of the Manage Material Data – Environment Management app, you can select properties from your additional properties list on the Additional Properties tab. If the required property doesn't already exist, you can create a new additional property. Once you have created the property, it will be available for selection in the additional properties list.
Picture 3: Additional physical-chemical properties of the material, such as boiling point, high heat value, etc. can be specified.
Picture 4: In the Additional Properties section, the system navigates to the Manage Additional Properties app where the properties can be entered. The section shared data with SAP Product Compliance.
With this feature, in the Manage Material Data - Environment Management app, a user with the role of Environmental Manager can assign active compliance purposes for dangerous goods to waste materials that have the Disposed of logistics role. You also require a Product Compliance license and the Product Stewardship Specialist – Product Compliance role. Compliance purposes (collection of relevant dangerous goods compliance requirements from the issuing authorities) must have already been created in Product Compliance before you can assign them on the Dangerous Goods tab of the Manage Material Data - Environment Management app. After a valid dangerous goods purpose is assigned to a material, the assessments of the dangerous good corresponding to the relevant compliance regulations are visible. These assessments are available to be maintained and released by a user with the role of Dangerous Goods Specialist – Product Compliance in order to comply with transport regulations.
With this feature, you can assign waste codes to waste materials so that these waste materials can comply with the relevant environmental regulations, standards, and laws. Waste codes are required for the creation of waste disposal documents that meet compliance requirements. Waste codes are previously entered as a regulatory list in a Compliance Requirement Regulation and then assigned to a waste material using the Manage Material Data – Environment Management app.
In environment management, tasks are used to describe the necessary work to complete a step in a process. The tasks assigned to you are displayed in the Work Overview which serves as an inbox where you receive tasks.
With this release, it is possible to assign a Task or a Task with Approval to a given location role for further processing or approval. The following new sections have been introduced in the Manage Task Definition app:
With this release, only the delivered standard roles can be used.
Once assigned, the task is sent to all users with the specified location role for the location of the task, and not only to one specified user.
Picture 5: Assign a Task or a Task with Approval to a given location role for further processing or approval.
When the assignment is done based on a location role, the system checks all users with the specified location role for the location of the task and sends notifications to all of them. The notifications are received in the My Inbox app.
Once one of the assignees or approvers claims the task by choosing Claim in the My Inbox app, the notification is removed from the inboxes of the other recipients.
The claimed task can later be released back if the user is not going to process or approve the task. In this case, the task is again assigned to all possible recipients and appears in their inboxes
Remark: In case a person responsible for the selected role assignment cannot be found in the location of the task, the system checks for the role assignment at a higher level of the location hierarchy.
The workflow notification is sent to the responsible persons who were found in the location at the higher level of the hierarchy
In the task management process, the system provides the possibility for setting the recurrence of a task using one of two scheduling modes.
The recurrence pattern that can be set for the task definition is determined by either the start date (existing feature) or the due date (new feature) of the task.
It is also possible to specify if a task should start on the day of its due date.
The following use case is relevant for the new scheduling mode of tasks with recurrence:
Picture 6: New schedule mode for task recurrence based on Task Due Date allowing customers to schedule recurrent tasks by desired Due Dates in business cases in which the due dates are important.
The new schedule mode of task recurrence - Based on Due Date - can be determined in the system by:
Recurrence Period: The recurrence period is set by specifying the First Start Date and the End Date of the recurrence.
Recurrence Pattern: The recurrence pattern indicates whether the recurrence is daily, weekly, monthly or yearly; on which day of the week the task instance should start/end; determines the Due Date by Start Date or vice versa, etc.
Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide trap heat in the atmosphere and are leading causes of climate change.
To learn more about this topic, see GHG Protocol http://ghgprotocol.org/
With this feature, you can store and use emission factors for materials (for example, the amount of pollutant per produced material) and for chemical/physical properties (for example, scope 2 GHG emissions per one kw/h consumed electricity).
You can use listed substances to define environmental data sets in the compliance scenario like data collection, calculation results, aggregation, and sampling data. You can also use listed substances when you maintain the composition data of a material (product) in your company.
With this release, SAP delivers additional factors for electricity to support the scope 2 and 3 emission calculations according to the Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) based on the US regulations. eGRID is typically used for greenhouse gas registries and inventories, carbon footprints, consumer information disclosure, emission inventories and standards, power market changes, and avoided emission estimates.
More details can be found here: https://www.epa.gov/egrid
Picture 7: Manage factors for indirect emission (scope 2 and scope 3) in a more usable way using emission factor regulatory lists.
With this release, the system supports the use of data classifiers for data collections and calculations. Setting a data classifier to the data sets received from these activities can help you to easily filter through data records and keep them apart.
For the purpose of monitoring, reviewing, and reporting emission information, you can use classifiers for environmental data for easy filtering of data records. This grouping mechanic in the reviewing of environmentally significant data enables you to quickly distinguish between different categories of chemical information.
Picture 8: Data classifiers support the processes of monitoring, reviewing, and reporting emission information.
In SAP S/4HANA, you can define in detail your calculation of emissions by navigating to the Calculation Details Setup which you access from the compliance scenario. The detailed calculation setup enables you to manually enter equations, define individual variables, run a system check on your mathematical expression, and test-run a calculation with the calculation simulation function. Input data for the calculation can be imported as regulatory content, in addition to the option of entering it manually.
With the SAP S/4HANA 2021 release, new calculation input options are delivered. The system supports the usage of compositions and chemical/physical properties of materials as input options for calculations.
In order to create the required material data, the environmental manager can use the Manage Material Data – Environmental Management app.
Picture 9: Support of the usage of compositions and chemical/physical properties of materials as input options for calculations.
With Environment Management in SAP S/4HANA 2021, the My Permits app is delivered.
This app complements another app – Manage Compliance Requirements – Regulations, Permits, Policies. Permits are associated with the location of the current user with the Environmental Manager role. A person with that role does coordination of waste on a local or global scale and reviews and edits transport and shipping papers
As part of the compliance requirements preparation processes, the environmental manager can now also create permits that include the fields Location and Permit Lifecycle in the My Permits app.
These new fields give further capacity to add specific information related to permits.
Picture 10: Create permits that include the fields Location and Permit Lifecycle.
The permit lifecycle refers to the sequence of stages that a permit can go through according to the business use case.
The stages are: In preparation à Application Submitted à Active à For Reviewal à Expired.
Remark 1: The permit lifecycle describes the standard permit management process with the legal authorities whereas the compliance requirement status describes the different stages of the compliance requirement record in the system.
Remark 2: If the permit has expired, the My Permits app displays the record in red. If the permit is for renewal, the My Permits app displays the record in yellow.
With this feature, environmental data can be retrieved using a variety of filters with the Environmental Data - Analytical Query CDS view. This CDS view provides data to answer the following business questions:
The Environmental Data - Query can be used in external BI tools for the SAP S/4HANA system such as SAP Analytics Cloud to retrieve transactional data from Environment Management. In addition, within SAP S/4HANA, the query can be used to access environmental data through the Query Browser app.
Picture 12: Query environmental data using a variety of filters with the Environmental Data - Analytical Query CDS view.
Thanks for reading this blog post. Stay tuned!
If you are also interested in other Line of Business, I would like to draw your attention to my link collection blog – The Link Collection
If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community. This platform which is available to SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers and partners has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA 2021, check out the following links:
Follow us via @Sap and #S4HANA, or myself via @VoglerChrist and LinkedIn
In this blog series, I will give you an expert view, from product experts to product experts, of some selected highlights for the Environment, Health, and Safety of our SAP S/4HANA 2021 release. All these innovations will also be available for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition.
The blog is built as a series of 2 parts and present the key highlights for:
- Part 1: Environment Management
- Part 2: Incident Management
In this first blog, you can find information on functions that are used by Environment Management.
Use of a Material Object in EHS Processes
You can use material data in Environment, Health, and Safety processes, such as setting up compliance activities and managing environmental releases. Materials are represented by the newly created master data object - Chemical Compliance Info. It is a central object and serves as an integration point between the Environment, Health, and Safety and Product Compliance solutions.
You can choose if you want to use chemicals or materials in your EHS processes and switch between the objects as needed in customizing. The standard system is delivered with the Chemical Compliance Info object selected by default. The recommendation for the new customers is to start with the Chemical Compliance Info object. The possible switch is valid for Incident Management and Environment Management but not for Health and Safety solutions. The "old" Chemical object will be deprecated in the next releases. Health and Safety solution still depends on this object.
The apps Manage Material Data (F4864) app and Manage Substances Compliance (F2578) app can be further used to create materials and substances
Background
Materials represent substances, a mixture of substances, or discrete products (such as lightbulbs) that are specific to a certain company and are physically available at the company's plant. Unlike listed substances (such as mercury, lead, ethyl acetate, benzene, toluene) that describe only the regulatory information available for a substance, materials (such as detergents) can be manufactured, traded, or procured.
Along with the other subjects that take part in the industry processes, when you ensure the environmental compliance and sustainability of your company, you must consider all specific materials too. Hence, the materials, similarly to the other subjects, play a major role in forming the environmental footprint of your company and are a critical prerequisite for the overall environmental management processes. In environment management, materials are used to:
- Specify environmentally-relevant data, such as the amount of produced material or the amounts of used fuel (material).
- Analyze and use material composition and chemical-physical properties in emissions calculation methodologies.
To fulfill the scope of your environmentally-related business case, you can create materials. Later on, you can use materials in the following ways and processes:
- As subjects of the environmental limits or equations in compliance requirement preparation.
- As subjects for data collection, sampling, calculation, or location-based aggregation activities in compliance scenarios.
- As data source types for calculations.
Remark
If the substance that you want to assign is not yet available in the system, you can use the Manage Substances Compliance (F2578) app to create it and give it a company-specific name. This app supports the creation of a substance in the company's inventory, which enables the substance to be used in the analytical compositions that make up products and raw materials. These substances can be used later on in the definition of the analytical composition for materials with emission relevance.
Picture 1: SAP Fiori apps related to the master data management
Management of Material Data in Environment Management
With this feature, you can create new materials and manage their data in the Manage Material Data – Environment Management app. You can assign products (from the Product Master) to the selected material and manage its analytical composition and its physical-chemical properties, manage additional properties, manage waste codes, assign dangerous goods compliance purposes, and view and navigate to dangerous goods assessments. Once the material data is maintained, you can use the material in follow-on business processes, for example, you can set it as a subject in a sampling activity.
Management of Material Composition
Maintain a composition of the Material object. Additionally, in Environment Management, you can use the created composition in calculations.
Picture 2: In the Analytical Composition section, the environmental manager can add substances to the analytical composition of the material.
Key Features
In the Analytical Composition section, the environmental manager can add substances to the analytical composition of the material.
Alternatively, if the substance is not yet available in the Environment Management system, the environmental manager can create it from the Manage Substances Compliance app.
The Analytical Composition section shared data with SAP Product Compliance.
Assignment of Additional Properties to Materials
With this feature, you can select properties from your chemical/physical properties list or create new properties to assign to a material. If you don't find a property to meet your requirements among the properties provided on the Default Properties tab of the Manage Material Data – Environment Management app, you can select properties from your additional properties list on the Additional Properties tab. If the required property doesn't already exist, you can create a new additional property. Once you have created the property, it will be available for selection in the additional properties list.
Picture 3: Additional physical-chemical properties of the material, such as boiling point, high heat value, etc. can be specified.
Key Features: Default Properties
- In the section Default Properties section of the material default physical-chemical properties of the material, such as molar mass can be specified.
- By opening the Additional Properties section, the system navigates to the Manage Physical-Chemical Propertiesapp where the properties can be entered.
- The section shared data with SAP Product Compliance.
Key Features: Additional Properties
- In the Additional Properties section of the material additional physical-chemical properties of the material, such as boiling point, high heat value, etc. can be specified.
- By opening the Additional Properties section, the system navigates to the Manage Additional Properties app where the properties can be entered.
- The section shared data with SAP Product Compliance.
Picture 4: In the Additional Properties section, the system navigates to the Manage Additional Properties app where the properties can be entered. The section shared data with SAP Product Compliance.
Addition of Dangerous Goods Information to Materials
With this feature, in the Manage Material Data - Environment Management app, a user with the role of Environmental Manager can assign active compliance purposes for dangerous goods to waste materials that have the Disposed of logistics role. You also require a Product Compliance license and the Product Stewardship Specialist – Product Compliance role. Compliance purposes (collection of relevant dangerous goods compliance requirements from the issuing authorities) must have already been created in Product Compliance before you can assign them on the Dangerous Goods tab of the Manage Material Data - Environment Management app. After a valid dangerous goods purpose is assigned to a material, the assessments of the dangerous good corresponding to the relevant compliance regulations are visible. These assessments are available to be maintained and released by a user with the role of Dangerous Goods Specialist – Product Compliance in order to comply with transport regulations.
Assignment of Waste Codes to Materials
With this feature, you can assign waste codes to waste materials so that these waste materials can comply with the relevant environmental regulations, standards, and laws. Waste codes are required for the creation of waste disposal documents that meet compliance requirements. Waste codes are previously entered as a regulatory list in a Compliance Requirement Regulation and then assigned to a waste material using the Manage Material Data – Environment Management app.
Tasks in Environment Management
In environment management, tasks are used to describe the necessary work to complete a step in a process. The tasks assigned to you are displayed in the Work Overview which serves as an inbox where you receive tasks.
Task Assignment to a Location Role
With this release, it is possible to assign a Task or a Task with Approval to a given location role for further processing or approval. The following new sections have been introduced in the Manage Task Definition app:
- Assignee Assignment
- Approver Assignment
With this release, only the delivered standard roles can be used.
Once assigned, the task is sent to all users with the specified location role for the location of the task, and not only to one specified user.
Picture 5: Assign a Task or a Task with Approval to a given location role for further processing or approval.
When the assignment is done based on a location role, the system checks all users with the specified location role for the location of the task and sends notifications to all of them. The notifications are received in the My Inbox app.
Once one of the assignees or approvers claims the task by choosing Claim in the My Inbox app, the notification is removed from the inboxes of the other recipients.
The claimed task can later be released back if the user is not going to process or approve the task. In this case, the task is again assigned to all possible recipients and appears in their inboxes
Remark: In case a person responsible for the selected role assignment cannot be found in the location of the task, the system checks for the role assignment at a higher level of the location hierarchy.
The workflow notification is sent to the responsible persons who were found in the location at the higher level of the hierarchy
Task Scheduling Mode by Due Date
In the task management process, the system provides the possibility for setting the recurrence of a task using one of two scheduling modes.
The recurrence pattern that can be set for the task definition is determined by either the start date (existing feature) or the due date (new feature) of the task.
It is also possible to specify if a task should start on the day of its due date.
Background:
The following use case is relevant for the new scheduling mode of tasks with recurrence:
- According to a legal requirement, the customer should report compliance data no later than the end of each month.
- In this case, it would be much more convenient for the customer to schedule tasks that are due at the end dates of the month.
Picture 6: New schedule mode for task recurrence based on Task Due Date allowing customers to schedule recurrent tasks by desired Due Dates in business cases in which the due dates are important.
The new schedule mode of task recurrence - Based on Due Date - can be determined in the system by:
Recurrence Period: The recurrence period is set by specifying the First Start Date and the End Date of the recurrence.
Recurrence Pattern: The recurrence pattern indicates whether the recurrence is daily, weekly, monthly or yearly; on which day of the week the task instance should start/end; determines the Due Date by Start Date or vice versa, etc.
Reminder
Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide trap heat in the atmosphere and are leading causes of climate change.
- Scope 1: Direct emissions from production processes
- Scope 2: how corporations measure emissions from purchased or acquired electricity, steam, heat, and cooling
- Scope 3: The Corporate Value Chain, this means – Other indirect emissions
To learn more about this topic, see GHG Protocol http://ghgprotocol.org/
Enhancement to the Creation of Regulatory Lists
With this feature, you can store and use emission factors for materials (for example, the amount of pollutant per produced material) and for chemical/physical properties (for example, scope 2 GHG emissions per one kw/h consumed electricity).
You can use listed substances to define environmental data sets in the compliance scenario like data collection, calculation results, aggregation, and sampling data. You can also use listed substances when you maintain the composition data of a material (product) in your company.
Key Features
With this release, SAP delivers additional factors for electricity to support the scope 2 and 3 emission calculations according to the Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) based on the US regulations. eGRID is typically used for greenhouse gas registries and inventories, carbon footprints, consumer information disclosure, emission inventories and standards, power market changes, and avoided emission estimates.
More details can be found here: https://www.epa.gov/egrid
Picture 7: Manage factors for indirect emission (scope 2 and scope 3) in a more usable way using emission factor regulatory lists.
Use of Data Classifiers in Data Collections and Calculations
With this release, the system supports the use of data classifiers for data collections and calculations. Setting a data classifier to the data sets received from these activities can help you to easily filter through data records and keep them apart.
For the purpose of monitoring, reviewing, and reporting emission information, you can use classifiers for environmental data for easy filtering of data records. This grouping mechanic in the reviewing of environmentally significant data enables you to quickly distinguish between different categories of chemical information.
Picture 8: Data classifiers support the processes of monitoring, reviewing, and reporting emission information.
New Calculation Input Sources
In SAP S/4HANA, you can define in detail your calculation of emissions by navigating to the Calculation Details Setup which you access from the compliance scenario. The detailed calculation setup enables you to manually enter equations, define individual variables, run a system check on your mathematical expression, and test-run a calculation with the calculation simulation function. Input data for the calculation can be imported as regulatory content, in addition to the option of entering it manually.
With the SAP S/4HANA 2021 release, new calculation input options are delivered. The system supports the usage of compositions and chemical/physical properties of materials as input options for calculations.
In order to create the required material data, the environmental manager can use the Manage Material Data – Environmental Management app.
Picture 9: Support of the usage of compositions and chemical/physical properties of materials as input options for calculations.
My Permits SAP Fiori app
With Environment Management in SAP S/4HANA 2021, the My Permits app is delivered.
This app complements another app – Manage Compliance Requirements – Regulations, Permits, Policies. Permits are associated with the location of the current user with the Environmental Manager role. A person with that role does coordination of waste on a local or global scale and reviews and edits transport and shipping papers
Permit Lifecycle
As part of the compliance requirements preparation processes, the environmental manager can now also create permits that include the fields Location and Permit Lifecycle in the My Permits app.
These new fields give further capacity to add specific information related to permits.
Picture 10: Create permits that include the fields Location and Permit Lifecycle.
The permit lifecycle refers to the sequence of stages that a permit can go through according to the business use case.
The stages are: In preparation à Application Submitted à Active à For Reviewal à Expired.
Remark 1: The permit lifecycle describes the standard permit management process with the legal authorities whereas the compliance requirement status describes the different stages of the compliance requirement record in the system.
Remark 2: If the permit has expired, the My Permits app displays the record in red. If the permit is for renewal, the My Permits app displays the record in yellow.
Analytical Query CDS View for Transactional Data
With this feature, environmental data can be retrieved using a variety of filters with the Environmental Data - Analytical Query CDS view. This CDS view provides data to answer the following business questions:
- What amount of a specific pollutant has been released for a given location over a certain period of time?
- Which locations in the company produce the most emissions?
- What is the highest sampled value of a pollutant?
The Environmental Data - Query can be used in external BI tools for the SAP S/4HANA system such as SAP Analytics Cloud to retrieve transactional data from Environment Management. In addition, within SAP S/4HANA, the query can be used to access environmental data through the Query Browser app.
Picture 12: Query environmental data using a variety of filters with the Environmental Data - Analytical Query CDS view.
Thanks for reading this blog post. Stay tuned!
If you are also interested in other Line of Business, I would like to draw your attention to my link collection blog – The Link Collection
If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community. This platform which is available to SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers and partners has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA 2021, check out the following links:
- SAP S/4HANA release info: sap.com/s4hana
- SAP S/4HANA Community here
- The Link Collection for Product Compliance here
- SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
- Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
- Join the SAP S/4HANA Movement
- Best practices for SAP S/4HANA here
- Help Portal Product Page here
- Feature Scope Description here
- What’s New here
Follow us via @Sap and #S4HANA, or myself via @VoglerChrist and LinkedIn
- SAP Managed Tags:
4 Comments
