Material compliance is a very complicated matter. There are many different policies and laws that all participants of this industry have to comply to. It is crucial to stay on top of things when it comes to fast passed policies and laws. All parties also have to adapt quickly to policies and laws that have been changed. But there are not only fast passed or changed laws and policies that have to be considered. Besides statutory guidelines, there are also customer requirements that need to be fulfilled.
That means that every service provider of this industry has to check the policies, laws and requirements constantly in order to prevent missing any changes. This requires a lot of time and resources, but if the compliance cannot be guaranteed, even bigger costs will occur.
Beside communication the manufacturer of a product has to identify materials that are not allowed, calculate the amount of this substance to discover if it is over a specific limit and present the result on the products parts list. This supports the manufacturer in delivering requirement-compliant products.
The platform must allow to manage the supply chain, maintain detailed product information and request product information from suppliers.
Business Need: Material compliance is a very complicated matter. There are many different policies and laws that all participants of this industry have to comply to. It is crucial to stay on top of things when it comes to fast passed policies and laws. All parties also have to adapt quickly to policies and laws that have been changed. But there are not only fast passed or changed laws and policies that have to be considered. Besides statutory guidelines, there are also customer requirements that need to be fulfilled.
That means that every service provider of this industry has to check the policies, laws and requirements constantly in order to prevent missing any changes. This requires a lot of time and resources, but if the compliance cannot be guaranteed, even bigger costs will occur.
Beside communication the manufacturer of a product has to identify materials that are not allowed, calculate the amount of this substance to discover if it is over a specific limit and present the result on the products parts list. This supports the manufacturer in delivering requirement-compliant products.
The platform must allow to manage the supply chain, maintain detailed product information and request product information from suppliers.
Solution: The solution Mansystems built for tec4U has become one part of a product now and is called "DataCross - Communication + Compliance". DataCross – Bill of Materials is professionally based on the established tec4U Solutions GmbH software tools “CoChecker“ and has already proven his mettle in this regard at small and medium-sized structures, as well as in groups of companies.
DataCross – Bill of Materials and DataCross- Material Compliance Communication are combining a fully developed data communication software with a tried-and-tested data calculation and checking tool. DataCross – Bill of Materials is combined with the same modules as the DataCross – material compliance communication project and it can store, calculate and display the communicated information on top of a complex product part list imported from an external ERP system.
With the Bill of Materials it is possible to make sure that all parts of a product can be inspected individually within the used context, considering exceptions and though display and document that the product conform with customer requirements and applicable laws such as REACH, RoHS, conflict mineral requirements, etc. All material requirements can be calculated and displayed in a law specific way to support the persons that are responsible for the material compliance process. The requirements of DIN EN 50581/IEC 63000 can be consistently implemented by way of a software technology. All substance risks can be registered and monitored in detail and also business-related as well as personal risks can be minimized.
Technically speaking, the DataCross Bill of Materials is part of a hybrid distributed system. It consists of a central cloud instance as well as of on-premise instances. This allows to display relevant material compliance information resulting from a communication process between suppliers and OEM’s or. The system can display results from a partly declaration process of a product as well as from a full declaration process as it is used in the automotive area.
Results: The project "DataCross- Bill of Materials" has been as well a great success in combination with DataCross- Material Compliance Communication module. Mansystems and tec4U have built a product functionality that will hit the market in several branches it combines the calculations and presentation based on full declaration, that is common within the automotive sector, with partly declaration that is common in all other branches esp. when SMEs are involved.
DataCross – Bill of Materials enables a high level of user acceptance within the OEM partners– guaranteed by the intuitive operating concept – and the system-supported specific presentation of the law specific compliance estimations.
The part list is created and presented as a tree with law specific information and will be recalculated automatically when information coming from the supplier communication process changes or when information has been confirmed by the OEM. The system can handle big part lists with several branches and switching between the committed laws and regulations.
A sophisticated KPI system/cockpit provides information on the performance of the system and implementation of material compliance in the end product/supplier product. This enables product risks to be determined and evaluated and activities to be initiated and/or monitored at the touch of a button.
DataCross places the highest demands on system functionality and data security.
The registered OEM can import part lists exported from his ERP system and update existing part lists when articles of the ERP system has changed. No part list or articles are stored in the data transfer server, DataCross is possible as well as an in-house system. It supports OEMs declaring his internal articles and insert information of a supplier when the internal communication process is not used by him. It reduces data entry effort – no data publication, data forwarding, supplier chain mapping anymore. System interfaces/data exchange formats to other MD communication systems are also possible.
Furthermore, the material compliance software DataCross is the first to enable the material-related requirements arising from regulations like REACH, RoHS etc. to be holistically mapped and evaluated within a company. These requirements of relevance for product liability can thus be implemented from the development stage via the procurement and production through to the use and processing, putting companies in a position where they can guarantee the conformity of their products with applicable laws and customer requirements while minimizing their own business-related and personal risks.
DataCross – bill of Materials supports the migration of data from MDS.web and other systems using xml- schema. So the material compliance process can start with the historically calculated product status of a OEM customer without any break in the process.
DataCross is still ongoing development, currently providing the users with the means to maintain their detailed product information, exchange basic compliance information with their suppliers and generate the respective risk and compliance ratings.