SAP Customer Success Story | Chemicals | Clariant
© 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
Clariant: Optimizing Product
Safety and Stewardship with
SAP® Software
SAP Customer Success Story | Chemicals | Clariant
Company
Clariant International AG
Headquarters
Muttenz, Switzerland
Industry, products, and services
Chemicals – specialty chemicals
Revenue
US$6 billion
Web site
www.clariant.com
SAP® solutions
SAP® Environment, Health, and
Safety Management application;
SAP Recycling Administration
application; SAP EHS Regulatory
Content packages
Partner
SAP Consulting
Thriving in an ever-fiercer compliance
landscape
Clariant International AG provides specialty chemicals to companies globally. Chemical
manufacturers, their customers, and supply chains are subject to a fast-growing array
of environmental, health, and safety regulations that, if not managed, pose serious
risks to brand and revenue. Where does Clariant turn for help with product safety and
compliance and risk of supply chain disruption? To solutions for product safety and
stewardship from SAP.
SAP® software provides vital help for Clariant and its
supply chain to manage the health, safety, and environmental aspects of its products throughout their
total lifecycles. The software also supports Clariant’s
overall commitment to sustainability, its clients, and
its suppliers.
Say, for example, Clariant wants to tap into a new
market. Country-specific regulations, restrictions,
and registration status information at the substance
or product level can be easily obtained from Clariant’s
single, consistent, comprehensive, and reliable database of chemical compliance information maintained
using SAP software. New products can be shipped
more quickly, with confidence and at minimal risk,
protecting Clariant’s revenues and brand while engendering trust and benefitting suppliers, customers, and
local authorities who are collaborating with Clariant
on compliance and registration. All parties win and
contribute to the protection of people, the economy,
and the environment.
Read more
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© 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP Customer Success Story | Chemicals | Clariant
Introduction
Vision
Sustainability for growth, profits, and
competitiveness
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
~90%
Clariant owns more than 100 group companies and
employs more than 21,000 people. The group has
four business areas: natural resources; plastics and
coatings; catalysis and energy; and care chemicals.
Clariant creates value by investing in growth both
internally through innovation and externally through
strategic acquisitions.
Governments are issuing increasingly tight environmental protection and consumer safety regulations
on all aspects of product lifecycles. Among the toughest are Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and
Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) and the Globally
Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling
of Chemicals (GHS). Any company that manufactures chemicals finds that adherence to regulations
like these is crucial for protecting not only consumers
and the environment but also the marketability of
products and ongoing reputation of the company.
Clariant products
secured by SAP software
Clariant is vitally concerned about sustainability.
The firm cares deeply about complying with regulations not only to avoid fines and penalties but also
to improve relationships with customers and suppliers. In fact, Clariant has formalized its goals – reduce
its energy consumption by 30% by 2020 compared
with 2005 levels, and reduce its carbon dioxide emissions and waste by 45% over the same period – and
is on track to achieve them.
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© 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP Customer Success Story | Chemicals | Clariant
Introduction
Vision
Simplifying and managing mountains
of complexity
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
Ascertaining whether it is adhering to all applicable
regulations is enormously complicated for Clariant.
The firm uses over 240,000 substances globally in
its manufacturing, delivers to more than 160 countries
that all have their own regulations, and produces more
than 15,000 safety data sheets annually. Clariant charters a corporate sustainability group supported by
Michael Hartmann, head of global regulatory compliance. “My group’s toughest challenges are to accurately report on our compliance status and our cost
of compliance,” Hartmann says. “In the past, that job
was doubly difficult because of the disparate tools
we were using. We had several solutions for product
labeling that weren’t consistent with one another, let
alone with the various different tools we used for creating safety data sheets. We had to move away from
that scattered environment and adopt one solution
that comprehensively covered all our compliance
requirements.”
Clariant was already an SAP shop for its business needs
and had deployed the SAP Environment, Health, and
Safety Management (SAP EHS Management) application many years before. Therefore, Clariant had no
trouble making its decision. “There is a huge benefit
in having integration and consistency between enterprise resource planning and compliance software, as
well as having both of them architected around a single
database,” says Hartmann. “With a common source, the
way SAP does it, you’re going to get common results.
The data on a safety data sheet is going to be the same
as on a product label and the same as on workplace
instructions. We didn’t need to think twice about choosing SAP for our product safety and stewardship needs.”
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© 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP Customer Success Story | Chemicals | Clariant
Introduction
Vision
Replacing dozens of solutions with one
comprehensive family
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
Clariant chose SAP solutions for product safety and
stewardship to manage hazardous substance management, global label management, product compliance,
safety data sheet generation, and recycling administration. Building on its longtime relationship with SAP
Consulting and wanting to leverage the group’s collaboration efforts and expertise again, Clariant chose
SAP Consulting to help implement the solutions.
“The addition of product safety and stewardship solutions from SAP is helping Clariant remain a leader
in managing health, safety, and environmental aspects
of our products throughout their lifecycles,” says
Hartmann. “We are providing better services to our
customers while managing sustainability in a holistic
way. The software is helping us bundle our know-how
in fundamental product stewardship to comply with
legal requirements while equipping us to add value to
the business, support our product stewardship organizations, harmonize their business processes, and
keep them highly efficient.”
“A comprehensive database about our products, the
substances that comprise them, and all necessary
data about their compliance profiles is the pivotal building block in supporting adherence to regulations globally. That is what our solutions for product safety and
stewardship from SAP provide,” Hartmann continues.
“We also appreciate our close collaboration with SAP
Consulting and the expertise its people delivered.”
“SAP software provides the support we need to comply with regulations
such as REACH and GHS.”
Michael Hartmann, Head of Global Regulatory Compliance, Clariant Produkte (Deutschland) GmbH
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© 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP Customer Success Story | Chemicals | Clariant
Introduction
Closing in on 100% coverage
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
Clariant’s rollout of its sustainability solutions from
SAP is now nearly complete. “Right now, about 90%
of the products we sell worldwide are protected by
SAP software, and we are planning for 100% coverage
within two years,” Hartmann reports.
With the solutions’ help, Clariant is successfully demonstrating compliance with REACH, GHS, and similar
regulations all around the world. Hartmann’s group
is also finding it easier to apprise the board about the
cost of achieving compliance.
Clariant is systematically whittling away at the array
of legacy applications as momentum grows for moving
to SAP software. The different approaches for generating safety data sheets are gone, for example, and
so are the various labeling applications. SAP software
fulfills all their functions. “When we had all those disparate applications, we also had disparate groups that
ran them – which we have now consolidated into one.
The labor savings alone are huge, not to mention all the
software support costs we are saving,” says Hartmann.
“Also, this single source helps us respond quicker to
customer and supply chain requests for substance
information, greatly improving customer service and
relationships.”
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© 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP Customer Success Story | Chemicals | Clariant
Introduction
Vision
Navigating an ever-denser thicket without
adding staff
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
The efficiency, data consistency, and content of chemical regulations, rules, phrases, regulatory data, and
templates introduced by the SAP solutions help Clariant
achieve a primary goal – comply with expanding global
chemical regulations without adding staff. Updating
and delivering 15,000 safety data sheets annually, for
example, is done at the push of a button.
prevent the purchase of noncompliant products.
Attempts to purchase Clariant products that would
be noncompliant at their destinations are immediately
visible, allowing the company to resolve the problem
quickly and avoid expediting changes. This visibility
also reduces the risk of shipping the wrong products
or materials.
Integrated data enables Clariant to have better control
and make faster decisions throughout a product’s lifecycle. Immediate visibility of compliance status during
sales order processing helps the firm respond to customer requests faster. Sales orders, purchase orders,
and production orders are set up with alerts or automatic blocks. Checking compliance information helps
At the end of a product’s lifecycle, the SAP Recycling
Administration application assists with the proper disposal of materials used in manufacturing. In Germany,
it is also helping Clariant evaluate the fees it owes under
the European Union’s recycling directives, calculate
packaged goods amounts that are due to its recycling
partner, and provide auditable transaction accounting.
“Having a state-of-the-art system gives us confidence internally in the
event of an audit, enables us to respond faster to our customers, and
helps us attract and retain employees with EHS expertise – who are
difficult to find.”
Michael Hartmann, Head of Global Regulatory Compliance, Clariant Produkte (Deutschland) GmbH
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© 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
Clariant
Introduction
Vision
Managing
EHS standards
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
One of Hartmann’s strategic goals is to support innovation and time to market using design-for-compliance
concepts. “We are moving toward embedding product safety and stewardship considerations at the earliest phases of the design process,” he explains. “This
means that at the very beginning of the product lifecycle process – in addition to considering chemical cost
and availability – we will be able to consider the product’s compliance status and our ability to market it.”
Clariant also wants to facilitate communication about
sustainability issues throughout its supply chain by
using the SAP Product Stewardship Network. The
company would like to rely on this new cloud-based
collaboration solution as its core platform for communicating all relevant product regulation information
across the supply chain.
CMP21396 (13/04) © 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
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