To find out more about the technical aspects of the Material Disclosure solution, request a demonstration of the software's ins & outs.  If your company is a good fit for Material Disclosure, we'll schedule a demonstration for you.  If not, we'll suggest what avenue might be more effective in your case.  Contact Actio here.

Quality assurance and chemical ingredients:  Product stewardship and quality mandates in today’s global manufacturing supply network requires chemical software that compares supplier’s material disclosure data against centralized, updated regulatory chemical lists, including custom lists.  It's necessary to collaborate with suppliers to make sure chemical-level ingredients in a product are known, communicated and up-to-date. 

With ~100,000 named chemicals whirling around industry today, the only way to meaningfully track ingredients to that level is in an automated supplier query system connected to a robust relational database that organizes and stores materials information for roll-ups and selective reporting.  

Actio Material Disclosure’s updated features include advanced supplier response query tools, incredible new easy-to-use interface (!), enhanced supplier contact management tools, IPC1752 xml schema auto-importer and generator.

Chemical software:  Material Disclosure can be described as chemical tracking software that also enables supply chain collaboration and automated data-gathering and central, secure, private storage and retrieval of that data.  This confluence of functionality allows tracking on all levels of finished good ingredients and components: from source through manufacture, distribution and in end-of-life.  Companies use Material Disclosure to accurately measure, manage and mitigate risk regarding all chemicals and substances in all aspects of a product line, from raw materials to toxic releases to finished goods. 

Chemical list management:  Correct chemical data management bolsters brand image and sustains a positive corporate reputation – as well as keeps regulatory agencies happy and shareholders safe.  To make it all happen, companies today must obtain complex and detailed chemical lists. 

Risk management and quality control starts by enabling meaningful supply chain collaboration.  The analysis begins with regulations.  By aligning that data with regulatory lists – which are constantly changing and updated – managers can determine risk in products, raw materials, components and ingredients in a real time, meaningful way. 

Environmental reporting:  Compliance reporting today consists of culling everything from threshold amounts of chemical ingredients to toxic release data for both process and discrete manufacturing.  Seasoned, proven, enterprise-grade data chemical software made specifically for supply chain collaboration is the only rational way to manage risk in today’s product manufacturing environment.

Material Disclosure is the solution.  Manage chemical lists with advanced software technology from Actio that combines supply chain collaboration with environmental reporting.  The age of product stewardship is here, and with it comes the intensifying need across industry for material disclosure software tools. 

With over a decade of success making software for tracking data on substances, parts, mixtures, and chemical ingredients in a manufacturing supply chain, Actio’s software for material disclosure is the undisputed market leading solution.  Schedule a demonstration with a qualified Actio representative.

Quality assurance and chemical ingredients

What's in the supply chain can make or break the brand.  Material disclosure is software designed to securely collect and warehouse regulatory and compositional information about the materials used in product manufacture.  This proven solution makes quality assurance in an increasingly complex regulatory landscape not just possible, but a positive and productive experience up and down the supply chain.

Material Disclosure tracks, measures, analyzes, and reports on the items both in terms of its components and the chemical-substances therein.  It works simply by consolidating data on the toxic or potentially damaging substances that are coming up through the supply chain, into warehouses, then products, and into toxic releases and waste streams.

"What's in your product?" Is the question.  When manufacturers really want the answer, they choose Material Disclosure software.  Actio's products are in use by some of the world's largest manufacturers with global supply chains as well as Small and Middle-sized Enterprises (SMEs).

Companies using this proven supply chain collaboration system send automatic communications regularly to their suppliers at scheduled intervals.  Permissioned managers then monitor supplier response – a largely-automated process.  The manager is alerted automatically when a supplier makes a change to the product data or to a regulatory question or regarding Compliance Certification.  The managers are also alerted when a supplier doesn't update information they should have.

Supplier product and materials data is constantly compared against standards, national, international, and local regulatory lists, directives, chemical lists, and all manner of rules.  Custom criteria, custom correspondence templates, custom automated contact schedules, and custom questionnaires are also available.  For instance, manufacturing companies often want certification that a supplied product or raw material is REACH, RoHS, WEEE, GADSL compliant, as well as – sometimes –  whether it is compliant with a certain industry chemical list or with hundreds of other possible standards and custom criteria.

Challenges for quality managers

It's a jungle of chemical lists, laws and standards across all industries.  Proliferating regulations regarding chemical ingredients have created quite a tangle of well-intentioned but almost rabidly intertwined requirements.  Enterprises are required to demonstrate greater visibility into materials used to manufacture finished goods, and to report in detail and at length on this intelligence.  The increased requirements come from all angles – from government agencies to internal stakeholders – and are largely due to increased concerns about risk in terms of product liability, environmental impact, and consumer health and safety, as well as international regulatory compliance and of course the avoidance of expensive recalls and brand damage.

In short:  companies must publish material disclosure documents.  While the information contained in the Material Safety Data Sheet or MSDS is a good start, many raw material providers have opted to present ingredients in those documents as a range, or to withhold them entirely to keep their trade secrets proprietary.

As a result, manufacturers are forced to request material disclosure information from 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 products to many manufacturers, this process soon becomes onerous and very costly to execute and maintain.  It's nearly impossible to manage this with yesterday's paper system, spreadsheets, or a homespun Access database.

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 all this done?

Supplier product and materials data is constantly compared against standards, national, international, and local regulatory lists, directives, SVHC lists, and all manner of rules.  Custom criteria, custom correspondence templates, custom automated contact schedules,  and custom questionnaires are also available.

For instance, manufacturing companies want certification that a raw material or supplied good is REACH, RoHS, WEEE, GADSL compliant, as well as – sometimes – whether materials are compliant with hundreds of other possible lists, standards, and custom criteria.

The quality assurance system for tracking chemical ingredients

Powered by Actio’s single, central relational database software technology, Material Disclosure manages 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.  Material Disclosure securely – and by permission only – collects, warehouses and distributes compositional information on raw materials used in product manufacture.

Manufacturers use Material Disclosure’s auto email correspondence, online forms, and robust reporting capabilities to:

• request
• capture
• manage

disclosure information from suppliers.

Suppliers log into the secure portal to input product regulatory and compositional information for their products.  Suppliers securely manage the “publishing” of content to requestors throughout the supply chain; they save time and money because they only have to enter the data once.  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 the Material Disclosure tool, 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 of supply chain collaboration about chemical ingredients

For the Manufacturer

• Automated email correspondence and auto-reminders 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 Everyone

• 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

Contact us at your convenience to find out how Material Disclosure supply chain collaboration software would work for your quality efforts, compliance, and your company as a whole.