Actio Gatekeeper - Material Request and Approval System

For international manufacturers like Honeywell and Owens Corning, Actio Gatekeeper is a manufacturer’s new best friend. Gatekeeper is material purchase software, ideal for automating and managing Six Sigma initiatives, REACH compliance, and other environmental regulations. Gatekeeper is the new “traffic cop” in town when it comes to authorizing and purchasing ingredients for the products you manufacture.

The Gatekeeper request and approval system streamlines chemical, parts, substance and/or material purchase with an automated workflow environment that manages, screens, and tracks -- from request to receipt -- new materials brought on site. By managing the acquisition of materials, Actio Gatekeeper mitigates risk and brings management of change (MOC) quality improvements and process efficiencies to the product substance approval cycle.

InformationWeek writes about Gatekeeper: "a product that helps users automatically route and track requests, approvals, and purchases of hazardous materials." To see latest Gatekeeper press - including Supply Chain Brain and Managing Automation - please click here.

Challenge

New global regulations, such as REACH and RoHS in Europe, as well as domestic initiatives, like California’s “Green Chemistry” initiative, are adding to the complexities of international commerce and impact every manufacturer wanting to transport or sell products in those markets.

Each regulation has its own set of restrictions and is designed to control the use of certain substances in products used within those markets.

Compliance requires manufacturers to be familiar with the regulatory requirements within each region, as well as to know the ingredients – down to the substance level – used in their products.

Failure to comply with these regulations means manufacturers must forgo selling into those particular markets – forfeiting the potential for millions of dollars in revenue.

In addition to compliance mandates, progressive manufacturers must take a proactive approach to knowing what chemicals reside in their raw materials and the implications of their use. This critical knowledge enables companies to take necessary measures to mitigate risk of brand damage and costs associated with product liability resulting from toxic substances found in products.

Given this more stringent global regulatory landscape, introducing new products or product formulations is becoming more and more complex for manufacturers and requires a cross section of enterprise stakeholders to conduct an enormous amount of due diligence before bringing new chemicals/materials on site for research and development or manufacturing use. For example:

Safety and Hygiene will need the toxicity and personal protection requirements of the material.
Environmental and Risk Management will want to ensure the substances within raw materials requested pass global regulatory hurdles and support corporate sustainability objectives.
Materials Engineering will need to know component information for compatibility with existing and future materials planned for manufacturing.

Existing processes and systems used to manage material requests are, many times, unique to each plant facility and are often paper-based, labor intensive and slow. Without best practices and technology assistance to control and manage the acquisition of new chemicals enterprise wide, companies risk the high costs associated with process inefficiencies, as well as uninformed decisions that may cause revenue loss from product delays or non-compliance, or worse, brand damage caused by product recalls.

Solution

Actio Gatekeeper is an online material request and approval system that brings process efficiencies and enterprise control of new materials brought on site. Gatekeeper creates a workflow environment that manages and tracks new material requests from pre-screening and approval to purchase and receipt of inventory.

Ideal for automating and managing Six Sigma initiatives or REACH compliance, Gatekeeper keeps the acquisition of materials controlled, accountable and trackable. Chemical requests made throughout the enterprise are automatically pre-screened to identify whether any substances contained in the requested material are hazardous, a carcinogen, a REACH restricted substance, a hazardous air pollutant, contains ingredients that require reporting, or are banned all together from the facility. With access to the platform’s centralized database of substance-level material data and a library of more than 150 international, federal, state and local regulatory lists, including any enterprise-specific lists of banned or restricted substances, Gatekeeper can automatically compare the requested material, as well as the material’s ingredients, to the regulatory list library to:

Verify international, federal, state and local hazard/regulatory issues
Determine specific health, safety and storage requirements
Insure corporate sustainability objectives, like HAP/VOC reduction, are met

If the request passes the pre-screening process, Gatekeeper automatically routes the request through a predefined approval process until the chemical is purchased. If more research is required by a scientist or approver in the process prior to purchase, Gatekeeper facilitates communication with the supply chain through Material Disclosure where an email request can be made to a supplier asking for key information about the components of a raw material. The supplier is directed to an online form to input this information in the secure, online portal. Once collected, this information can then be used to further evaluate whether the material meets corporate objectives.

Gatekeeper can be integrated into ERP systems, like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft Dynamics, driving the integration of the request function to the approval and purchase of a material. This integration removes purchasing bottlenecks, provides significantly better data management, and reduces the subsequent handling costs of the material when it arrives on site. Supply chain integration can be configured with existing ERP systems, supplier networks like Ariba, or supplier links can be embedded in Gatekeeper.

Benefits

Facilitates lean manufacturing by streamlining chemical/material research and approval processes
Facilitates green manufacturing by reducing the number and volume of hazardous chemicals and toxic substances used across geographically-dispersed facilities and curtails procurement of unwanted products
Protects revenues by reducing the cost of product delays and/or recalls
Tighter controls with chemical inventory reduces risk and corporate liability
Provides Six Sigma metrics making the acquisition of materials controlled, accountable and trackable
Delivered as a Software as a Service (SaaS) with no hardware and software to purchase and maintain, providing fast time to benefit and a very low total cost of ownership