Exploring the Solution Area Safety Data Sheets

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
  • Describe business context for safety data sheets, addressed business roles and their tasks.
  • Depict an overview on safety data sheet processes.

Overview of Business Context and Regulatory Background

Placing chemical products on the market requires the provision of information regarding its hazardous properties, precautions for safe handling and measures to be taken in case of unintended release or other emergency situations. Along with this information, compliance with specific regulations must be proved. According to the regulations of many countries, the safety data sheet with its defined structure and content must be provided to customers.

For companies producing or selling these products, an efficient system to support handling mandatory documentation is inevitable. The related processes comprise of the following main process steps:

  • Assessment of the required information to be put into the safety data sheet;
  • Provision of the created document with applicable structure and information in required languages as defined in the target markets' legislation;
  • Versioning of documents in case of changes;
  • Shipment to customers - this may also imply subsequent shipment in case of relevant changes.
This image provides an overview of various international regulatory frameworks and standards related to the classification, labeling, storage, and handling of chemicals, for example the US OSHA Hazard Communication Standard, REACH, China's Hazardous Ingredients regulations, and the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS).

Numerous regulations are applicable when it comes to the provision of safety data sheets for products.

These regulations relate to various aspects, for example:

  • from the structure of the document down to occupational exposure limits of substances contained in the product;
  • from registration or notification requirements for the product to required languages for a market;
  • from classification and labeling to safety precautions and emergency measures.

To comply with these obligations, companies face two major challenges:

  1. To collect all necessary data and to compose the safety data sheet document.
  2. To integrate with the value chain to provide safety data sheets when selling the product.

Overview of Addressed Business Roles, their Tasks and Integration

Get to know the business roles involved in safety data sheet processes as well as tasks and needs.

This image illustrates the integration of various roles within product compliance core processes and business integration, detailing specific positions such as Master Data Specialist, Product Stewardship Specialist, Dangerous Goods Specialist, Internal Sales Representative, and Shipping Specialist.

The obligations and requirements related to safety data sheets address two areas in a company:

  1. The product stewardship specialist - product compliance takes care to create, review, and update the safety data sheet document.
  2. Business roles involved in the value chain
    • The master data specialist - product data identifies products which require provision of a safety data sheet when being sold. The assignment to specific product groups can serve as identification of compliance relevant products to be assessed by the product stewardship specialist - product compliance.
    • Business roles involved in the order-to-cash process, like the internal sales representative, or the shipping specialist must ensure, that safety data sheets are provided to customers.

      To support daily business, these roles require functionalities to do the following:

      • Check availability of required safety data sheets when selling a product to a market
      • Initiate shipment of the safety data sheet to the customer.

Product Stewardship Specialist - Product Compliance

This screenshot shows the tiles representing some of the most important apps of the solution area Safety Data Sheets.

Responsibilities

  • Performs day-to-day operations that ensure the compliance of products
  • Reviews compliance data of products and performs checks to ensure its correctness and completeness
  • Creates the necessary compliance documents such as safety data sheets and keeps them up-to-date
  • Participates in product reviews
  • Answers inquiries from sales or customers

Goals

Ensure that products are compliant, so that they can be sold or transported.

Needs

  • Impact analysis of product changes, as well as changes in raw materials, changes in regulations, new sales areas and new applications of products
  • An overview of compliance statuses of products
  • Stay up-to-date on chemical regulations

Master Data Specialist - Product Data

This screenshot shows the tiles representing some of the most important apps for Master Data Management.

Responsibilities

  • Coordinates product data
  • Ensures product data quality
  • Creates, maintains and displays product master
  • Copies product master, chooses parameters for copy
  • Flags a product master for partial or complete deletion
  • Flags products as compliance relevant to trigger follow up processes in Dangerous Goods, Product Marketability and Safety Data Sheet Management

Goals

  • Create and maintain product master data.
  • Ensure that only consistent product master data will be available in the system.

Needs

  • Easy tool to maintain the product master data

  • Work list with all relevant products

  • Possibility to display the product master

Internal Sales Representative

This screenshot shows the tiles representing some of the most important apps for Internal Sales.

Responsibilities

  • Creates sales orders and provides information on processing status

  • Completes sales orders with necessary data – regarding Dangerous Goods e.g. applicable quantities or calculation of packages / pallets / container / weight

  • Monitors, troubleshoots, manages and collaborates on critical open issues from the sales order fulfillment such as missing safety data sheets or dangerous goods information

  • Manages backorders and provides general sales support for the outside sales forces

Goals

  • Work effectively and efficiently

  • Up-to-date overview of the process status and degree of fulfillment to easily identify where a need of action exists

Needs

  • Quick and easy access to relevant information regarding for example DG-and SDS Status for products

  • Easy to consume, clear representation of the context, relationships, issues and process steps in order to take the proper measures

Shipping Specialist

This screenshot displays some example tiles representing some of the most important apps for tasks in the area of Shipping.

Responsibilities

  • Plans delivery batch creation

  • Groups orders for shipment to destinations and carriers as required, taking into account dangerous goods regarding mixed loading restrictions and transport permissibility

  • Answers inquiries from sales or customers and edits deliveries if data is missing

  • Coordinates dangerous goods regulation changes with dangerous goods expert

Goals

  • Ensure that customers receive their deliveries in time

  • Optimize delivery efficiency

  • Be compliant and stay compliant regarding Dangerous Goods and Safety Data Sheet legal requirements

Needs

  • Analyze deliveries regarding shipping schedules, DG restrictions and SDS availabilities

  • View delivery-relevant master data including compliance data such as SDS availability and DG data

  • Communicate with Product Safety Stewardship team about new markets

Overview on Safety Data Sheet Processes

Get an overview on safety data sheet processes and their integration into the value chain.

This image depicts the main processes of the solution area safety data sheets, highlighting the individual processes safety data sheet authoring, safety data sheet management, and managing compliance objects for safety data sheets.

To comply with the obligations regarding safety data sheets, the solution area Safety Data Sheets comprises of 2 major processes:

  1. Safety Data Sheet Authoring - this means assessment, collection, and assembly of information to be published on the safety data sheet
  2. Safety Data Sheet Management - this process is integrated with the supply chain. Based on transactions in the "Order to Cash" business process, checks and automated shipment of safety data sheets are processed. This applies for an initial shipment for the customer and for subsequent shipments in case the safety data sheet is updated, which is subject to versioning of safety data sheets.

Functionalities to manage compliance requirements, compliance purposes, and to apply regulations complete the set of processes.

This image outlines a workflow for product safety data management involving various roles (Master Data Specialist, Product Stewardship Specialist, Internal Sales Representative, and Shipping Specialist) and stages from creating product masters to processing safety data sheets (SDS), eventually leading to system-automated safety data sheet generation and shipment.
This image illustrates the process and components involved in safety data sheet (SDS) authoring and management, highlighting steps from collecting compliance information to automating SDS shipment, with some functionalities integrated into the value chain.

In safety data sheet authoring, you prepare all information to be published on the safety data sheet (SDS).

Then you compose the document according to the legally defined structure and allocate the information accordingly.

The outcome is the base safety data sheet (base SDS), which is assigned to the compliance view of the unpackaged product.

In safety data sheet management, you manage versions of the base SDS.

The base SDS is foundational for generation of the final safety data sheet of a packaged product, which is sold to a customer.

Initial shipment as well as subsequent shipments are automatically processed based on the integration with logistic processes.

This image outlines a process for Safety Data Sheet (SDS) management, starting with assessments to gather compliance information and ending with the completion of the SDS document, is future functionality as of 2023.

Safety data sheet authoring is made up of two steps:

1. Processing of safety data sheet related assessments (functionalities for this step are not yet complete)

Information resulting from these compliance assessments supplement basic compliance data such as the product's composition or properties, contained in the compliance view.

2. Completion of safety data sheet information and document creation (functionalities for this step are not yet available)

Based on the data collected, supplementary information is derived for example by compliance calculations to finally create the base safety data sheet according to the underlying regulations of a country/region.

The resulting base safety data sheet is related to the compliance view of the unpackaged product

This image outlines a process for managing, generating, and automating the shipment of Safety Data Sheets, integrated into the value chain. As of 2023, generation of final Safety Data Sheets is future functionality.

In safety data sheet management, we basically have three steps:

1. Versioning of the base safety data sheet

After uploading the initial base safety data sheet to the compliance view of a product, you can define an updated base safety data sheet as a new major version or a new subversion of the released major version. This is essential for subsequent shipments, since the creation of a new major version triggers subsequent SDS shipments.

The following two steps are applied combined upon SDS shipment:

2. Generation of the final safety data sheet (functionalities for this step are not yet available - base SDS can be shipped)

The final SDS is related to the packaged product. It is created from the base SDS by merging data, for example from product master, or SDS contact data related to the sales organization related to the customer, who is the addressee of the shipped SDS.

3. Automated safety data sheet shipment

Based on business data like sales business transactions, or customer master data, automated SDS shipments are triggered. This implies the determination of the applicable SDS for the country/region along with translations as well as the recipient on customer side.

This image outlines three tasks related to safety data sheets: analyzing their availability, monitoring their shipments, and managing contact data.

Analyze Safety Data Sheet Availability

Get an overview on available safety data sheets, assessments in process and historic versions. You can narrow down for example by country/region or for products.

This helps you to organize safety data sheet assessments.

Monitor Shipments of Safety Data Sheets

Since provision of safety data sheets is a legal obligation you need to make sure, the SDS is shipped to the recipient. You can identify failures and can immediately take action to ensure safety data sheets are sent to your customers.

This is for initial SDS shipments as well as for subsequent shipments in case of updates and new major versions of the SDS document.

Manage Contact Data for Safety Data Sheets

According to the legal responsibilities for SDS provision, usually it is the selling organization, which is the sender of the safety data sheets.

With safety data sheet contacts, you define who appears as sender. This can be very specific by product or more broadly by sales organization or country/region.

Safety data sheet contacts are mandatory for SDS shipment.

This image outlines a sequence for managing compliance, covering the management, activation, and application of safety data sheets and regulations, as well as the management of compliance purposes.

Manage Compliance Requirements Safety Data Sheets

Review your compliance requirements for safety data sheets. For specific compliance patterns for safety data sheet authoring, you might want to create your own, company-specific compliance requirements based on examples, provided in the system.

You can update your compliance requirements by creating a new version.

Activate Compliance Requirements Safety Data Sheets

Before you can make use of a compliance requirement, you must activate it. Only activated compliance requirements are available for assignment to compliance purposes.

You can also deactivate obsolete compliance requirements.

Apply Regulations Safety Data Sheets

For safety data sheet management, you can apply existing compliance requirements to other countries/regions. You may use this option in case for a country/region, there is no official regulation for safety data sheet management in place and you want to use a compliance requirement from the system embedded regulatory content.

Manage Compliance Purposes

To have compliance requirements available for assessment in a compliance view, you must assign compliance requirements to compliance purposes. Only compliance purposes can be assigned to a compliance view

Note

This is a brief outline of the process steps to manage compliance objects for safety data sheets.

Integrated Value Chain Functions

Regarding safety data sheets for products, there are three functionalities integrated with logistics:

  • Request from logistics - initiated by editing product master data, for example, setting the compliance relevance of a new material to Yes or in case specific data in the material master of an existing product is edited. A request from logistics is also created when, during processing of safety data sheet checks on a sales or a delivery document, for example no released safety data sheet assessment is available for the country/region of the ship-to party.
  • Safety data sheet checks on purchasing, sales, and delivery documents - these checks are processed automatically if the logistics document is changed, a delivery is created from a sales order or in case there was a request from logistics created from a sales order and this request is processed and closed.
  • Automated shipment of safety data sheets - to comply with legal obligations to provide safety data sheets to customers. According to underlying regulation, this applies for the initial provision of the SDS document but also for subsequent shipments in case of changes which result in a new major version of the SDS.
This image outlines the value chain integration process, highlighting logistics aspects of purchasing, sales, and delivery, integrated functions for various scope items, and the product compliance relevance with activated scope item 3VQ for Safety Data Sheets in the value chain, emphasizing compliance checks and documents
This image depicts a workflow process involving Master Data Specialists, Product Stewardship Specialists, Internal Sales Representatives, and automated systems for creating, managing, and processing safety data sheets (SDS) during product sales and shipment

Safety Data Sheet Processes and Related Apps

Have a glance on the apps used in safety data sheet processes.

This image outlines a detailed process flow for managing compliance objects, authoring, and managing Safety Data Sheets (SDS) with steps involving compliance requirements, activation, assignment, application of regulations, and assessment processing. Along with the process steps, the tiles representing the related apps are shown.
This image outlines the detailed process flow Safety Data Sheet Management with the integration in the value chain of sales and delivery, highlighting manual and automated processing steps along with monitoring and compliance functions.

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