Environmental Compliance Management

Abstract

National and international regulations, laws, and recommendations are confronting all industries with more and more tasks and obligations. One example is the Integrated Product Policy (IPP) of the European Union which as a comprehensive approach in environmental politics outlines the strategy for reducing the environmental impact caused by products along the entire life cycle. Reaching this IPP objective might highly influence corporate business. Policy instruments include current directives such as REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals), WEEE (Waste of Electric and Electronic Equipment) and RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances). These directives build a basis for manufacturers ́ requirements. Together with other national and international regulations and laws as well as client-specific requirements, long lists of banned substances have to be managed, controlled and fulfilled by the supplier industry. Guaranteeing compliance turns out to be a more and more complex task for enterprises. Therefore, automated organisational security between business partners and between company departments becomes essential. In order to reduce process costs the handling of compliance data has to be transferred from island solutions into a company’s main business solution. Data about “not-to-use-substances” is required where product decisions are made daily, i.e. in Laboratory, Purchase and Engineering departments, but also in Production and Controlling/Finance. The centralised availability of data within companies combined with effective tools to link supplier data as well as customer requirements together is a main challenge for IT tools today. Based on SAP’s business suite, the following text provides a solution map to meet today’s business requirements in the area of compliance, environment and safety.