Environment Management

This figure shows the various governments around the world that have issued environmental regulations to protect the environment and the ecosystem. For example, in US there is the Clean Air Act to ensure good quality of air, the Clean Water Act to protect the natural waters of the US and minimize the pollution.

Similarly, other country governments have issues similar policies and regulations to protect the environment.

Beyond governments enacting laws to protect the environment, various internal and external stake holders are pressuring organizations / businesses to improve their environmental performance and report it.

For example, investors are asking companies to report their environmental performance data annually in the Sustainability reports.

Business partners are asking for certification to prove they have good environmental management systems in place - for example, ISO140001.

Internal management is concerned with the impact to the brand for not being environmentally conscience the risk associated with it.

Environmental management challenges are as follows:

• They must follow all requirements from various applicable regulations / policies / permits
• They must be aware of changes to multiple specific rules / requirements
• They must enact a timely fulfillment of compliance requirements and record-keeping
• They must ensure proper data collection and calculation accuracy
• They must maintain consistent, transparent, and auditable inventory processes

Government policies as well as internal / external stake holders pose a challenge to an organization to ensure they stay compliant all the time. Organizations have to identify all the requirements they need to comply with be it from policies, regulations or permits. Sometimes, these can be in thousands for one location. They have to keep up with changing regulations, implement compliance requirements in a timely manner and keep records, collect and / or calculate environmental data, plus implement a consistent, transparent, and auditable compliance process.

You have already learned in the previous unit that SAP product Environment Management can help with creating inventories of air emissions. This same product can also help you generate inventories of GHG emissions. SAP Environment Management can help our customers to calculate, monitor, and report their GHG emissions. It does so by leveraging functionality like pre-built equation and emission factor library for some regulations, automate, and workflow-based data collection, proactively flagging data with issues, monitoring and reporting of GHG emissions.

As a summary, SAP's environment management product support customers in the following:

• Leverage pre-built emission factor library and equations
• Collect activity data like fuel used, or electricity used
• Proactively flag data issue with data collection or emission calculations
• Monitor thresholds of greenhouse gas emissions
• Report on greenhouse gas emissions

The picture above represents all master data objects involved in environmental management processes and their related actions.

The environment management application component helps companies to stay compliant with emissions-related environmental regulations. The solution covers the processes and sub-processes of managing compliance scenario activities to ensure compliance. These processes enable you to create and incorporate a strategy of managing environmentally-related data from data collection, sampling, calculation, and aggregation of emissions into the daily operations within your companies.

• Manage air and water emissions to fulfill legal requirements
• Calculate and aggregate emissions while fostering proactive data transparency and monitoring
• Detect and communicate deviations, manage investigations, and track follow-up activities

Regulatory and Permit Compliance has the objective of supporting the process of managing a central legal / permit / policy requirement registry and consistent processes that support the full lifecycle of compliance-driven tasks and exceptions.

The solution provides the following capabilities:

• Import and get automated change updates to applicable regulatory requirements from content providers
• Establish and maintain a comprehensive EHS legal / permit / policy requirement registry
• Manage all compliance related tasks by monitoring compliance tasks using the Task Calendar

Customers can benefit from the following:

• Ensure transparency on compliance requirements and improve compliance performance
• Reduce Compliance risk and ensure auditability

The regulatory and compliance management has a very linear process.

The environment manager is being supported in the creation of compliance requirement repository. The compliance requirements can be either manually created or optionally they can be retrieved as regulatory content from a third-party solution. The Environment Management solution comes with a build-in option for integration to SAP content provider partner RegScan and their RegScan One solution. Other integrations with content providers - for example, ENHESA - can be easily built.

After the compliance requirements have been created or imported from the third-party solution of a content provider, they can be assigned to specific locations.

The environment manager can schedule compliance tasks directly from the compliance requirements, trigger the execution of the tasks, monitor using the task calendar view and perform the required analysis.

The process starts with the creation of the regulatory content. The compliance requirements can be created manually or retrieved using content provider integration.

The applicable requirements based on regulations can be imported from external content providers using the Import Compliance Requirement app. Automatic updates to requirements are also made available when applicable regulations change.

The compliance requirements contain the following:

• Environment Limits:

  Limit checks are very important to demonstrate the compliance. Limit definitions are very flexible and easy to define. An icon indicator is showing at glance the limit check result.

  Define environmental limits by providing a name, a type such as 'upper, lower, or range limit,' the subject and unit of measure. It is possible to define a limit value and a warning value.

• Regulatory Lists:

  You maintain regulatory list data, such as emission factors, which can be used for emission calculation at a later stage. You have to provide the applicable emission factor, which is dependent on the substance and / or the pollutant used.

• Equations:

  Equations can be defined within the compliance requirement and can be used for calculating emissions for multiple locations by referencing a Compliance Scenario.

  Each equation will have associated header data (Name and Description), a results table, and input variables.

  The equation result can have multiple intermediate and final results. In addition, each equation can be reused with different types of data (which are used in calculation or in aggregation).

In the process step, Maintain Compliance Requirements, the EHS regulatory expert can monitor the compliance requirements and make further changes if required. The existing content can be also copied to accelerate the creation of the compliance requirements. Import from a spreadsheet is also possible.

Based on external or internal guidelines, a corporate EHS Regulatory Expert maintains the so-called compliance requirements in the system. This is how the regal repository can be established in the system and how it can be used as source for other processes in environment management.

Three types of requirements can be maintained, which are as follows:

• Regulations
• Permits
• Policies (defined company internally)

The regulatory content imported from internal sources can be used as an example. Using the copy function of the compliance requirement, you can further enhance the content with the company specific data.

In the process step, Assign Compliance Requirements to locations, the local EHS Mangers maintain the compliance scenarios by assigning the compliance requirement to actual locations in the company.

The foundation of the overall environmental compliance of your company includes the environmental compliance of all pieces of equipment (or locations) across the company. Therefore, to control and monitor the compliance on a global company level, you have to plan and carry out environmentally relevant activities for the various locations at the company.

To organize all these environmental activities at a given location in the company, you can use an object known as compliance scenario, in which you can plan and carry out as many instances of these activities as the specific business case requires. The compliance scenario represents the applicable regulatory requirements in the context of location / facility and all its activities and tasks.

By assigning the compliance requirement to the compliance scenario, you can directly reference all predefined compliance data such as environmental limits, equations and regulatory lists.

Similarly, to the tasks in the other components, you can use tasks in environment management to schedule and assign the work required to perform an environmentally related action. A task, for example, a maintenance task, is a reactive or proactive step or activity that relates either to an entire compliance scenario or to a specific aspect of a compliance scenario (for example, affected equipment or assigned compliance requirement).

As a responsible manager, you can add the task and start the corresponding process directly in the compliance scenario. Then, the system communicates the task to the inbox of the assigned implementer. SAP EHS Management uses workflows to provide the sequence of steps that either a person or the system processes.

In the process step, Schedule Compliance Tasks, the related compliance tasks can be defined and scheduled from the compliance requirement.

The local EHS Manager defines the activities and tasks that need to get implemented in order to ensure compliance of the requirements from regulations, permits, or policies. To be able to schedule the task, the manager creates a definition of the task. There it defines the information needed for the execution of the task, such as priority, scheduling and recurrence, responsibilities, and additional pieces of information, for example, attachments or links. Later, the task process can be started from the created task definition.

In the process step, Execute Compliance Tasks, the EHS manager triggers the process for execution of the task.

Depending on the assigned responsibility the EHS Manager, the supervisor (field operator) or technician receives the work item in My Inbox. The Task can be completed, forwarded, or suspended. Comments, attachments, and links can be displayed and opened if required.

In the process step, Task Management (Calendar), the EHS Manager can monitor the execution of the tasks related to compliance activities in the system using the so-called Task Calendar app. With this app, the tasks for the team in a calendar view can be planned. It provides an overview of existing task instances in a time schedule. Based on the overall schedule, the status of the tasks, and the workload of the team members, the plan by reassigning and rescheduling the tasks between assignees can be adjusted.

The responsible EHS Manager can complete the following tasks in the application:

• Get an overview of planned tasks based on the filtering criteria of your view.
• Add and remove contacts in your calendar to manage the task plan for one or multiple teams.
• Save lists of contacts, with the applied filter settings, as view variants to easily switch between teams and view their tasks.
• View contact and task details directly in your calendar.
• Navigate to the Display Task Instance app for detailed task management.
• Navigate to the Manage Task Definition app to view task definition details.

Tasks can be filtered based on Location, Status, and Type. Managers can reassign the tasks by dragging and dropping it between individual users. Managers can change start / end date by stretching or shrinking the tasks.

Daily or Monthly views are available for monitoring team Compliance Tasks.

In the process step, Task Monitor and Analysis, the EHS Manager can perform the required analysis and monitor the execution of the tasks using the monitoring apps in the system.

The various monitoring applications in the environment management component enables the monitoring of the environmentally relevant data that is available in the system. The Task Processes Explorer application enables you to find and monitor environmentally relevant tasks (actions) that are created in the compliance scenarios. Using the application, tasks can be filtered out based on various criteria, such as start, or implementation dates, priority, compliance scenario, compliance requirement paragraph, person responsible, or implementer. Furthermore, in the application the task can be processed directly in terms of its implementation or perform further task-related operations.

The Monitor Tasks app supports the EHS manager in monitoring the tasks corresponding to one or many locations. The tasks can be filtered by the following:

• Start Date (From / To)
• Implementation Date (From / To)
• Overdue Tasks Only
• Completed Tasks
• Priority
• Responsible
• Implementer
• Location

The data can be exported in spreadsheet format and shared with external experts without providing access to them.

Regulatory and permit compliance solutions consist of three main functional components:

• Compliance Requirement
• Compliance Scenario
• Task Management

To be environmentally compliant, a given location (or a piece of equipment) must adhere to certain requirements - these may be part of the documents (regulations or permits) issued by the global environmental agencies or of the policies issued by the companies. These documents consist of conditions and requirements that are relevant for various industries or businesses and are organized into a given order (such as chapters, subchapters, parts, subparts, paragraphs). The functional components related to the compliance requirement support the environment manager in creating the compliance registry in the system.

The Compliance Scenario consist of components that mainly support the organization of all the environmental activities at a given location in the company. The solution provides the possibility of the assignment of compliance requirements to the respective locations, it supports the data collation process, and it helps you to organize the sampling process. The environment manager also supports the scheduling of identified compliance tasks.

Using the common process for managing tasks in SAP EHS Management on SAP S/4HANA, the environment manager is supported with specific My Inbox notifications for completing compliance tasks - for example, monitoring the execution of tasks using the Task Calendar app.

Regulatory and Permit Compliance support different ways of representing the data. Using the Monitor Tasks app, the environment manager can monitor the execution of the tasks and organize the follow-up activities. The system fully supports the completion of these activities on time by providing ad-hoc data outputs.

The environmentally related data can also be exported to spreadsheets.

The environment management application component helps companies to stay compliant with environmental regulations related to emissions. The solution covers the processes and sub-processes of managing compliance scenario activities to ensure compliance. These processes enable you to create and incorporate a strategy of managing environmentally related data from data collection, sampling, calculation, and aggregation of emissions into the daily operations within your companies.

The emissions management process supports the day-to-day operations, starting with data collection through validation and reporting.

The data collection is typically done by the operations / sites using workflow data collection tasks or mobile devices. It is also possible to have automated data flow.

Data can be uploaded in the following way:

• Through Excel mass upload
• Manually, there is also a mobile app available
• Through interfaces, for example, from process control systems

As soon as the data is captured, data validations can start. The built-in validation tools can provide insights into the raw data captured and the visibility of what is still missing or tasks that are overdue. Any data changes, comments, or deviations can be captured and there is full auditability.

The data can already be automatically aggregated and calculated based on pre-defined rules. This depends on the setup of the location-aggregation and calculation.

If there is missing data or a data-quality related problem, the solution allows for a deviation to be captured in order to track what data problems were found and what was done about it. This can be done at any point in time. Deviations can also be created automatically if there are limit exceedances. The exceedance that needs to be reported to authorities can also be investigated with deviations and corrective actions can be assigned as a part of the investigation.

Basic / Master data is a pre-requisite for the emissions management process and some data is used in defining the scenario; you can also create new data as per your requirement.

In this process, a location structure has to be created in the system. Without a single location, the emissions management process cannot be triggered. The environment manager has to ensure that the required master data is correctly created in the system.

The first step in the process is to identify and prepare the compliance requirements in the system. This is the task for the environment manager in the company. Depending on the requirement purpose, the environmental manager can create a process for the following:

• Regulation
• Permit
• Policy

Manage the regulations that are applicable for your operations.

Add the legal requirements in a hierarchy and add environmental limits, regulatory lists, and equations.

The compliance requirement details provide support for the environmental manager in defining or using from the example content delivery by SAP:

• Environment Limits:

  Limit Checks are very important to demonstrate the compliance. Limit definitions are very flexible and easy to define. An icon indicator is showing at glance the limit check result.

  Define environmental limits by providing a name, a type such as 'upper, lower, or range limit,' the subject and unit of measure. It is possible to define a limit value and a warning value.

• Regulatory Lists:

  Maintain regulatory list data, such as emission factors, which can be used for Emission calculation at a later stage. Depending on the substance and the pollutant used, you have to provide the applicable emission factor.

• Equations:

  Equations can be defined within the compliance requirement and can be used for calculating emissions for multiple locations by referencing in a Compliance Scenario.

  Each equation will have associated header data (Name and Description), a results table, and input variables.

  The equation result can have multiple intermediate and final results, and each equation can be reused with different type of data (used in calculation or in aggregation).

They can be used later in the compliance scenario.

When the compliance requirements are identified and created in the system, the environment manager can document all emissions related activities into a compliance requirement. Next step in the process is the environmental manager starts planning the emissions by creating and setting up the activities in the required compliance scenarios.

The compliance scenario is the object, which supports the execution of one or more compliance requirements. The main goal of compliance scenario is to define and plan various types of activities such as data collection, samplings, calculations, and location-based aggregation as well as tasks.

In the process steps, Collect and Sample Data and Calculate and Aggregate Data, the environmental manager has to perform the required steps to complete the planning. The respective compliance scenarios for the main location and the subordinate locations have been created.

The next step in the process is calculation and aggregation, which is based on collected and aggregated data, as well on as the input from the regulatory lists assigned to the compliance requirement.

The Data Collection activity is defined by assigning Environmental Limits and responsible persons to perform the measurement. The actual assignment of the persons is done on the location that has been assigned to the Compliance Scenario.

In addition, the schedule of the data collection can be maintained.

The Respective Sampling activity can be implemented within the Compliance Scenario. A Sampling Name and Sampling Subject are the mandatory attributes that are required together with the chemical property of the Sampled Subject.

Sampling Overview and Definition Details can be accessed directly from the Compliance Scenario.

Each calculation has a setup section that allows the Environmental Manager to maintain in the system the name and description. The environmental limits can be optionally referenced for the particular calculation result. Each calculation result can be monitored through Monitor Calculated Data.

The Calculation Setup Detail displays the calculation setup overview, the output of the calculation and the input variables used in the calculation.

The input variables should also be mapped to relevant data sources to get their values / units.

The environment manager can use this activity to acquire aggregated values for your environmental data for the purposes of environmental assessments and reporting to authorities. You can create and manage activities in the system for the aggregation of data based on your location structure. Your location-based aggregations use as input data collections, sampled data, and calculated data stored in your locations. The aggregation results depend on your recorded environmental data which was approved by an environmental manager for your location structure, and on the chosen mathematical function that governs the running of the aggregation itself.

The environmental technician records the missing data in case manual entries are required. Using the link from the received email or directly using My Data Collection app, the end user can then enter values for various data collection activities.

In the process step, Monitor Data and Identify Data Issues, the environment manager can perform certain checks of the environmentally related data and identify if there are any issues with the data.

The Monitor Data App can be used to Approve, Replace, Invalidate, Create Deviation for warning / exceeded data.

Data can be imported as well using MS Excel within the Monitor Data App.

Warnings and Limit Exceedances have to be approved manually before they can be consumed in a calculation.

The Monitor Data App can be used to Approve, Replace, Invalidate, Create Deviation for warning / exceeded data.

Data can be imported as well using MS Excel within Monitor Data App

Monitor Data App provides a graphical view of the data.

Collected and calculated data is automatically compared to associated limits in a compliance scenario and flagged, if exceeded.

Limit warnings and exceedances are displayed in the Data Issues - Exceedances and Warning app.

Tabular View of same data can be also used in Monitor Data app.

In the process step, Monitor Data and Identify Data Issues, the environment manager can perform certain checks of the environmentally related data and identify if there are any issues with the data.

The environment manager can forecast emission data based on past emission data with the help of predictive learning algorithms and statistical methods. Additionally, it is possible to compare the forecasted emission data against the environmental limits. By getting early indication of future deviations or noncompliance, the environment manager can plan proactively to avoid potentially unwanted events.

In the process step, Monitor Data and Identify Data Issues, the environment manager can perform certain checks of the environmentally related data and identify if there are any issues with the data.

The Environmental Data Explorer enables the Environmental Manager to monitor the environmental data (collected, calculated, sampled, or aggregated) at a given location and below in a hierarchy.

The main concept of the tool is to provide the possibility to the Environmental Manager to check, verify and analyze the data using flexible filters.

The Environmental Explorer provides a functionality to export the data to the following:

• Spreadsheet
• File-based Report

There are few profiles delivered by the standard that could be directly used or can be used as templates and bases for custom file-based reports.

In the process step, Identify Deviations, the environmental manager starts monitoring the data on a plant level and performs checks against company goals about compliance with applicable environmental limits.

The environmental manager concludes that there are deviations from the environmental limits and deviation records have to be created to further investigate the causes. A deviation record is an event of violation of specific environmental requirement(s).

When the deviations have been identified, they can be created as records in the system and a proper investigation can be performed and documented in the system. The environmental manager can use this procedure to review and complete deviation records that have been created for inconsistent environmentally related data. During the review and completion process, you can check the information that is already available for the deviation and change it if necessary. The deviation object is technically an incident object with the specific group deviation. It does not require a fully implemented incident management component. However, for the deviation processes, a corresponding incident management configuration is required. Moreover, some of the steps of the review and completion procedure remain the same.

Within the deviation record, all related tasks, which support the analysis of the deviation can be defined and triggered. The data needs to be approved prior to the task completion.

Based on the monitoring and analysis of incoming monthly emission data, a deviation incident can be created for the data where company goals are not met. A deviation incident for a selected data record (collected or calculated data) can be created and an investigation can be triggered to analyze the reason for it as part of another process. A deviation record is an event of violation of specific environmental requirements.

The created deviation is a category of incident in which an investigation process can be triggered to support the analysis of the cause for the exceedance. The deviation includes the documentation of the concerned data points and the investigation, creation of reports as well as the coordination of corrective and preventive actions.

The deviation includes the documentation of the concerned data points and the investigation, creation of reports as well as the coordination of corrective and preventive tasks. A deviation investigation can be performed to determine the causes that led to the deviation. Depending on legal or organization-specific requirements, an investigation can include different investigations steps, for example, a root cause analysis or lessons learned.

The data records need to be approved for further processing in a calculation.

You can define actions and notifications that must be implemented in response to a deviation. This includes starting processes that trigger their implementation in SAP EHS Management or integrated components. 

The data records need to be approved for further processing in a calculation.

When all corrective tasks have been completed, the current analysis of the data issues is completed. The emissions management process does not stop by completing the defined tasks. The implementation of the compliance requirement continues and all activities running in the compliance scenario will continue its execution depending on the defined timeframe.

Like the regulatory and permit compliance process, the emission management process has similar functional components. The process consists of the main functional components:

• Compliance Requirement
• Compliance Scenario
• Task Management

To be environmentally compliant, a given location (or a piece of equipment) must adhere to certain requirements - these may be part of the documents (regulations or permits) issued by the global environmental agencies or of the policies issued by the companies. These documents consist of conditions and requirements that are relevant for various industries or businesses and are organized into a given order (such as chapters, subchapters, parts, subparts, paragraphs). The functional components related to the compliance requirement support the environment manager in creating the compliance registry in the system.

The compliance scenario consists of components that mainly support your organization for all the environmental activities at a given location in the company. The solution provides the possibility of assignment of compliance requirement to the respective locations; supports the data collation process; helps in organizing the sampling process. The environment manager is supported also in scheduling the identified compliance tasks.

Using the common process for managing tasks in SAP EHS Management on SAP S/4HANA, the environment manager is supported with specific My Inbox for completing compliance tasks, monitoring the tasks execution using, for example, the Task Calendar app.