Facility Safety Management

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The Intelligent MSDS
Extending Chemical Management
BY JIM FROHLICH

As facility managers continue to place a high priority on moving their MSDSs into the digital world, the obvious benefits of automation typically drive the decision, and provide the initial return on
investment.

Data availability, speed of retrieval, accessibility of data and images from multiple locations and currency of information are the common advantages that make an MSDS/chemical management system appealing—and drive its adoption.

While safety, protection and compliance goals drive the project at the facility level, the use and reuse of MSDS and chemical information beyond the facility provides some of the most compelling and often-overlooked value when planningand implementing an MSDS/chemical management system.
Facilities are increasingly looking beyond the automation benefits, to a broader framework and value provided to the enterprise.

This helps to ensure that their MSDS/chemical management solution not only provides information where it’s needed, but also integrates well with related EHS applications and enterprise systems.

Getting the right safety, hazard and chemical information into your system is obviously the first step. Moving from paper form, or a combination of paper and digital, to fully digital MSDSs and chemical
information gets you into an entirely new set of capabilities.

Automating the MSDSs to provide fast response, and making the proper information available to right-to-know Users solves the first part of the problem, but gets you only part of the way. Capturing the right information set in the beginning makes your MSDS/Chemical Management system that much more effective when it eventually extends information to other areas.

Capturing an information set that includes chemical data, physical data, toxicology data, facility data, chemical container data, etc., and wrapping a set of business rules around it is extremely important. Then thinking through additional scenarios and the potential uses of that key information in other functional areas adds an additional dimension to the value that your MSDS/chemical management system brings to the table.

Using available technologies, MSDS and Chemical Data can be tied together to add even more value and truly make that data active. It can’t simply live in a database, with its value limited to archive, search and retrieval. The MSDS/Chemical Management platform has to take advantage of a
robust rules engine that can filter the information and intelligently make decisions based on parameters. It must take advantage of version controls and be tied to work-flow technologies that get the right MSDS and chemical information to the right people at the right time for decision support.

Robust reporting tools make regulatory reporting easier and more accurate.

Event monitoring technology that spots exceptions and conditions—along with tracking and scheduling technology—starts to round-out the set of tools that make the data extensible and meaningful not only within the facility, but to other systems and functional areas that need it. Finally, the
right integration technologies have to be in place. It’s those hooks to other systems that make the information extensible and useful beyond the facility. If you’ve laid the groundwork for your MSDS/Chemical Management system properly, your system and it’s data are positioned to play a role
across functional lines and extend to other high-value applications, making that MSDS and chemical management information a strategic component of your business. Beyond a traditional safety/hazard/protection role, general business operations functions benefit from the information in numerous ways. Overall planning and management, general reporting, risk management and
compliance activities have a need for a subset of that information, to help make those programs and initiatives more successful.

For example, when linked to your procurement systems, it helps optimize purchasing, spot trends and manage suppliers. In the risk management area, it helps track and demonstrate compliance, mitigate risk and perform general compliance reporting.

Linked with inventory systems, it helps track inventories, down to the container level, and provides real-time inventory visibility. At a general management level, the data helps monitor and track overall compliance, demonstrate good governance, and guard against the reputational risk associated
with regulatory actions or claims.

Thinking beyond the MSDS information itself, and looking deeper into the organization for applications of that information, not only helps extend the value of your MSDS/Chemical Management system, but
makes that real-time data more active and strategic when it comes to a broader organizational
view. Laying that cornerstone with some foresight in the beginning is a good start, but making the information available to other applications and functional gives it a truly enterprise role. FSM
Jim Frohlich is president and CEO of Safetec, Vancouver WA, whose MSDS/Chemical Management solutions help customers manage compliance and optimize operations related to their use
of hazardous chemicals. For more, call 888-745-8943 or email jimf@safetec.net.