Material Disclosure - Raw Material Disclosure System

Whether driven by regulatory authorities, risk mitigation, or corporate sustainability directives, global manufacturers today – such as Owens Corning and R.R. Donnelley – are pressured to provide customers detailed, substance-level product material disclosure information. In order to accurately provide this information, they must obtain the same detailed information from their suppliers about their products.

Material Disclosure is a robust supply chain communication tool designed to securely collect and warehouse regulatory and compositional information of materials used in the manufacture of products.

Challenge

Due to increased concerns about product liability, environmental impact, and consumer health and safety, as well as managing global compliance and avoiding expensive recalls and brand damage, enterprises are coming under more intense scrutiny and are increasingly required to have greater visibility into the raw materials used to manufacture their finished goods. Companies must publish material disclosure documents. While the information contained in the Safety Data Sheet ((M)SDS) is a good start, many raw material providers have opted to present ingredients as a range or withhold them entirely to keep their trade secrets proprietary.

As a result, manufacturers are forced to request material disclosure information from their suppliers – each using their own method of capture, with their own set of questions, specific to their needs. Suppliers must complete these unique disclosure requests – or risk losing the business. For manufacturers who buy from many suppliers and raw material providers who sell many products to many manufacturers, this process soon becomes onerous and very costly to execute and maintain.

Without effective supply chain communication and information sharing between suppliers and customers, manufacturers cannot quickly adapt and respond to global compliance mandates and corporate sustainability initiatives.

Raw material suppliers, on the other hand, need a way to “publish” to their downstream customers in a supply chain, for disclosure information on their raw materials while controlling who can access the information and what they can see. Supply chain visibility is the name of the game – but how is it done?

Solution

Material Disclosure is designed to securely collect, warehouse and distribute regulatory and compositional information on raw materials used in product manufacture. Powered by Actio’s relational database platform, Material Disclosure can manage detailed product information, including supporting documentation, such as Safety Data Sheets, technical data sheets, certificates of analysis, and food grade certificates, creating a single product record for each material.

Manufacturers can use Material Disclosure’s email communication, online forms and robust reporting capabilities to request, capture and manage disclosure information from raw material suppliers.

Raw material suppliers can use the secure portal to input product regulatory and compositional information for their products and then securely manage the “publishing” of content to requestors throughout the supply chain. Product disclosure documents requested by customers are automatically generated and can be customized by selecting check boxes indicating the specific information to be provided to the customer. For customers who make frequent requests, material suppliers can assign the customer a user name and password, as well as designate the information that can be accessible to that customer.

Leveraging Material Disclosure, suppliers no longer need to complete each individual customer request for product disclosure information. Instead, they can streamline the process by creating a “full disclosure” product record in Material Disclosure and easily define and distribute the information that has been requested by the customer. In addition, manufacturers have round-the-clock, centrally organized access to product disclosure information, greatly reducing global regulatory risk and product liability exposure.

Benefits

For the Manufacturer

Automated email communication to suppliers streamlines and tracks the progress of collecting product disclosure information on every supplied product down to the substance level
Information provided by suppliers in Material Disclosure is immediately accessible for the manufacturer
Information is organized and stored in a central repository so that it does not get “siloed” at each enterprise location
Highly customizable to capture data specific to a company’s needs

For the Supplier

Suppliers can automatically upload disclosure content for large raw material libraries using MS Excel or Access, or a CSV file.
Comprehensive material content information is entered once and resides as a single product record.
Custom reports, using only the information designated by the supplier, can be generated and distributed to the customer. Customers granted access only see the information designated by the supplier.

For Both

Secure platform has multiple levels of access control and provides an audit trail of who accessed what information and when
Database-driven platform provides unparalleled flexibility to quickly adapt to changes in global regulatory directives, product formulations, etc.
Global solution supports multiple languages and formats
Delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS) with no hardware and software to purchase, install and maintain providing faster time to benefit and lower total cost of ownership
Material Disclosure supports VeriSign’s secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology ensuring secure flow of data throughout the supply chain