For corporations, specifically chemical companies, the past two decades have presented more than ever new challenges to effectively manage their product portfolio. Product Stewardship and regulatory groups have moved from siloed departments into the spotlight because of more challenging regulatory requirements. Substances contained in products and raw materials need to be tracked in detail during procurement, manufacturing, and sales processes. New regulations have enforced the need for increased collaboration and integration throughout the product lifecycle. Consumer demands for sustainable products are increasingly impacting business models and non-compliance has the potential to significantly damage brand reputation and result in lost business. The chemical industry already realized years ago that this complexity could not be managed with non-integrated systems and excel sheets anymore. This ever-increasing complex environment compelled IT departments to sunset their isolated systems and move to an integrated approach.
Functionality, data, and documents need to be accessible throughout business processes and integration is key. In an integrated system, regulatory content, and documents such as safety data sheets and labels can be generated directly in an ERP system, allowing the distribution during business processes at the right times. For example, generated data is reused for the management of HazMat transportation and product labels to ensure the products are handled safely. Furthermore, the generated data is used to feed into marketability processes, addressing a vast number of global regulations which the business is required to comply with.
Proven capabilities already utilized for many years…
integrated in business processes…
*The only solution enabling product compliance capabilities integrated in the ERP system
Today, customers not only look at the conduct or actions of their respective supplier. Buyers are interested in the end-to-end supply chain. Focus is not only on products, raw material, and intermediates but the substances and components contained before and after the product is manufactured. Responsibility to determine and manage risks is moving more from the regulator to the producer. Manufacturers are in need of collecting, generating, and managing more data than ever and this trend will only continue. Solid product and component data is needed to be shared between business partners and data needs to be collected and generated to comply with new REACH regulations. I have personally dealt with country specific regulations such as Korea and Turkey REACH and legislation will continue to emerge and evolve globally. New platforms are needed for collaboration internally and externally across the supply chain to manage processes and collect data.
To evolve, this is where extensions to SAP S/4HANA for Product Compliance come in. SAP and ecosystem solutions such as from Opesus and Coac can provide further automation supporting notification requirements, extracting data from files such as SDSs or including AI capability for analytics available on SAP store www.SAP.com/store. Further, regulatory content is available from 3E Company. Look out for these offerings evolving and new cloud solutions to further gain efficiency and the competitive edge.
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