Wurth Meets Safety Data Compliance in 80 Countries with SAP

Wurth Group has signed a customer contract with German-based SAP to use SAP’s software to support product compliance, including safety data sheets, across operations globally.

In taking this step, the Wurth Group will be able to fulfill its legal obligations and serve its customers with compliance information for chemical products in nearly 80 countries in a more efficient way.

To comply with safety regulations such as the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) and REACH, the Wurth Group is required to provide documentation, including safety data sheets and labels. A decentralized approach to this process presented challenges for the company:

• product safety compliance would be a local responsibility with no corporate control;
• management of product safety compliance and level of organization varied significantly, with no systematic oversight;
• local services providers would need to be used with no cost control; and
• no global compliance management would be in place for the purchasing of chemical products.

SAP’s EHS Regulatory Documentation OnDemand content service will assist in faster turnaround times and processing of the Wurth Group’s service requests by leveraging the power of the cloud. The Wurth Group will provide new product or modified product information from its product life-cycle management system, while SAP maintains updates on regulations via global experts. SAP will then provide updated safety data sheets rapidly through the cloud for both new products or modified products when regulations change. The safety data sheets will then be integrated back into the on-premise SAP system, which in turn will be integrated across SAP Business Suite software so the information is used across functions.

SAP’s regulatory service automatically provisions more than 77,000 safety data sheets and supporting data and covers country specifics for nearly 80 Wurth Group country organizations. With the SAP software the time to availability of compliant safety data sheets can decrease nearly 30 percent. The company plans to extend the contract with SAP over the next five years.