CITGO, a multi-faceted refiner and marketer of transportation fuels, lubricants, petrochemicals and other petroleum-based products, is dedicated to the safety and health of its employees and the protection of the environment across its operations. The company is subject to numerous local, state and federal environmental and safety regulations from agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). CITGO continually analyzes, maintains, and improves its business processes to address compliance issues across the corporation. The company was looking for tools that would further strengthen its work processes and enhance performance. CITGO’s most recent project has been the design of an innovative Management of Change process powered by the IMPACT.

Cummins Inc. embarked on the task to enforce a list of prohibited chemicals among its locations worldwide. The list of 50 substances that were internally selected and potentially hazardous to employees and environment must be screened from more than 16,000 SDSs (Safety Data Sheets) utilized in the corporation globally. This represented a major challenge given some inaccuracies in outdated SDSs, partially disclosed ingredients and on-going procurement of materials potentially containing prohibited ingredients. Moreover, monitoring the number of SDSs containing prohibited chemicals as a key indicator and the ability to identify and filter SDSs which sites plan to upload into the system (SDS management tool) would become critical actions in the overall project.

Dow Chemical, a leading producer of plastics, chemicals, and agricultural products, was faced with the challenge of managing its environmental reporting across hundreds of facilities in the United States. The company had been using multiple legacy systems for regulatory reporting, but these systems were no longer sustainable, varied between sites, and required duplicate resources for support. The need for regulatory reporting compliance and technology replacement led to the initiation of the Dow Environmental Reporting Project in 2004. The project aimed to provide a cost-effective, high-quality, multi-media environmental reporting solution.

Drom Fragrances, a global fragrance manufacturer, was facing challenges in tracking and analyzing massive quantities of data from across their global organization to ensure compliance with numerous overlapping jurisdictions. The company was using seven disparate systems across different sites to collect product compliance and safety information. This process was time-consuming and inefficient, leading to potential inaccuracies and high operating costs. The company needed a centralized, global system to standardize and streamline their work processes, ensuring accuracy and reducing costs. They also needed to continue meeting the requirements of the International Fragrance Association (IFRA) Compliance Program, which requires “eco-labeling” and bans or restricts the use of 174 chemical substances in fragrance products.

Enginetics Aerospace Corporation, a leading provider of complex metal formed components and fabricated assemblies for the global aerospace industry, was seeking ISO 14001 certification. ISO 14001 is a framework that companies can follow to assure management, employees and other stakeholders that environmental impacts are being measured and improved. The certification would not only boost the company's reputation but also lower operating costs. However, the process of achieving this certification was challenging due to the need for accurate, timely Safety Data Sheets (SDS) information. Enginetics was already committed to ensuring compliance with other global mandates for product stewardship and sustainability, including Tier II chemical inventory reporting under the US Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), the Globally Harmonized System for Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS), and the European Union’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH). However, managing these compliance mandates manually was proving to be inefficient and prone to errors.

FUGRO, a global enterprise in the oil and gas industry, faced several challenges. They needed to improve the timeliness and accuracy of Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) risk information across their operations. The company wanted to leverage local knowledge of operations while establishing universal corporate standards. They also aimed to use HSE information to continuously improve customer service and investor confidence.

Husky Energy, one of Canada’s largest energy companies, was faced with the challenge of expanding its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reporting to meet growing compliance and sustainability requirements. In 2010, the government of British Columbia issued its Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act Reporting Regulation, which required companies to provide much more granular data. The new rules meant that Husky’s reporting obligations grew from 12 facilities with 14 pieces of equipment to over 136 facilities with 858 pieces of equipment. The company now needed to report on all well-level drilling emissions as well as tracking and reporting emissions down to the equipment level. This presented a significant challenge in terms of data management and reporting.

Kinder Morgan, one of the largest pipeline transportation and energy storage providers in North America, was facing a complex challenge of managing compliance for 918 facilities across hundreds of jurisdictions. The company's facilities were subject to 3,482 environmental permits and sets of safety requirements, which mandated reporting and other requirements for government regulations associated with air emissions, hazmat transportation, water, hazardous waste, spill prevention and more. In 2007, the company's leadership was seeking ways to significantly improve compliance across the company. They wanted regular compliance status reports like they get for budget and financial status, which the company couldn’t produce at the time. They had several different compliance systems, including a variety of different compliance calendars in spreadsheets or documents, but they didn’t have the ability to quickly retrieve data out of these systems or generate all of the reports they needed. As a result, they couldn’t look at compliance across the enterprise or quickly zero in on problem areas as easily as they wanted to.

Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) is a global leader in oil refining, gas liquification and supplying petroleum products to local and international markets. It operates three major refineries with 6,000 employees producing an average total of 900,000 barrels per day of distilled gasoline, diesel, and bitumen products. The company has a goal to be considered as the leaders in safety, health and environmental performance in the petroleum industry. To achieve this, KNPC has taken a proactive approach to environmental, health and safety (EHS) compliance and sustainability, focusing especially on the critical role of information management. In 2003, KNPC was one of the first companies in the Middle East to implement a centralized, enterprise-level software platform for air emissions tracking and reporting. However, the company faced challenges in promoting efficiency in current EHS information management work processes and leveraging EHS data for strategic decisions.

LANXESS Corporation’s Health, Safety, Environment and Quality (HSEQ) group supports global efforts to meet the highest safety standards covering more than 20,000 products in 52 production sites. The Pittsburgh HSEQ group is responsible for keeping all safety data sheets (SDS) current and compliant for 4,000 products in the United States, as well as for a few thousand more products produced in Canada and distributed in Mexico. They work together with other HSEQ groups in the EU, Brazil, China and Japan to author GHS compliant Safety Data Sheets in 39 different languages for destination countries around the world. The United States Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) has mandated that companies implement the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS).

Lloyd’s Register, a world leader in assessing business processes and products for safety standards, sought to improve its client risk assessment meetings. The company wanted to interact more effectively with clients during these meetings and expedite follow-up actions. Previously, meeting notes had to be captured by the engineers and support specialists in the meeting. Data about the client’s specific risks, safeguards, recommendations, and actions would be entered into various word documents and spreadsheets. Afterward, all of that information would have to be manually combined into a single draft document and circulated to the team that had attended the meeting. Each attendee would have to spend additional time checking to see that information from their discussion had been captured correctly and included in this encompassing document. Consolidation of information could take days and people could not see each other’s comments until they were issued in a draft revision. Important points made during the meeting might even get lost in the process.

A decade ago, Repsol executives realized that increasing pressure from local regulators and rigorous European emissions legislation as well as from ESG investors meant that their company needed to establish more reliable and credible environmental management processes. Repsol’s legacy processes for calculating air emissions were disparate, labor intensive and time consuming. Each facility had its own process to create the required regulatory reports and documentation. Many consisted of a series of steps to copy information from source systems – such as PI, laboratory information management systems (LIMS) and production systems – then create and maintain hundreds of spreadsheets with all the necessary calculations and reports. Each process required a host of manual tasks, which had to be performed repeatedly by Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) staff. As a result, these facility-specific processes left room for human error and provided only limited visibility across the company.

Rust-Oleum Europe, part of RPM International Inc, one of the world’s largest paint manufacturers, faced the challenge of ensuring compliance with regional regulations to maintain the right to sell in markets. The company had to meet the requirements of new and increasingly complex environmental, health and safety (EHS) regulations across the EU. They also aimed to go beyond compliance and promote standardization to make their operations more efficient. Another challenge was to provide Safety Data Sheet (SDS) information in multiple languages.

SAMTEC, a manufacturer of specialized electronic components, was facing challenges in managing and monitoring its chemical materials due to the growth of the company and the expansion into new product lines. The company needed to ensure compliance with regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which required constant monitoring of certain chemicals used in their manufacturing processes. The DHS provides companies with a list of thresholds for quantities of selected chemicals that they are permitted to have on site at their facilities at any one time. If the aggregated amount of a restricted chemical reaches thresholds specified on the “Chemicals of Interest” list, then the company must report the variance to DHS. EPA’s Tier II inventory reporting for EPCRA is another threshold-based regulation that provides a limit (in pounds) of specified chemicals that may be managed over a reporting year. If a business operation exceeds that threshold, then the company must provide an annual report to EPA. SAMTEC was committed to ensuring compliance with these and other regulations by constantly monitoring and managing all of its chemical materials but the job was getting more difficult.

S-Chem, a pioneer in the production of petrochemical products based in Saudi Arabia, was looking for ways to innovate and improve its processes to mitigate the safety and environmental risks inherent in the petrochemical industry. One key area was managing the multi-step workflows involved with expanding existing operations or building new facilities. The company was relying on a cumbersome paper-based Management of Change (MOC) system to manage the complex workflows and multiple action items necessary to add new equipment or make other operational changes. The manual process was complex and time-consuming, with each MOC made up of six to nine steps, taking almost a whole day just to compile all the necessary data.

Siemens, a global Fortune 500 company, faced a major business challenge due to the confluence of two major regulatory changes becoming effective on the same date. The U.S. OSHA adoption of the United Nations Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS) framework as its standard for hazard communication combined with the enforcement of the EU GHS regulation on mixtures meant Siemens had to reassess and reclassify over thirty-five hundred products by the June 1, 2015 regulatory deadline. Non-compliance would have created an extreme business disruption since Siemens would have been unable to sell its products in several markets. The GHS implementation project formally began in 2014 and leveraged software, content and expertise from Sphera to help them facilitate the transition.

Spectra Energy, a FORTUNE 500 company, is one of North America's premier pipeline and midstream companies. It has a commitment to sustainable operations and has been recognized by a host of independent organizations for its efforts. To deliver on these commitments, the company relies on its Environmental Performance and Safety System (EPASS). It standardizes processes for collecting and managing an array of environmental, health and safety (EHS) data, and then shares key aspects of that information both inside and outside of the company. EPASS also supports methodologies for calculating and reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are consistent with accepted industry guidelines from the Global Reporting Initiative and World Resources Institute. The company faced a challenge when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implemented its landmark Mandatory Reporting Rule, which applies to companies emitting 25,000 metric tons or greater of greenhouse gas emissions. Under current MRR’s Subpart C and Subpart W requirements, Spectra Energy initially was required to report combustion emissions data at 25 U.S. facilities.

Total Petrochemicals & Refining USA (TPRI) had an outdated proprietary software for management system auditing that was inefficient and costly. The software included over 1,500 questions, but any changes to these questions had to be made by the vendor for an hourly fee. This made the process of updating the system cumbersome and infrequent. Furthermore, the system was not integrated with the company's incident management and reporting software, Sphera Impact, which meant that audit findings had to be manually transferred from one system to another. This process was time-consuming and prone to errors. The situation worsened when the company upgraded its IT infrastructure, leading to functionality problems with the legacy auditing tool.

Vale, a global mining company, was striving to achieve best practices in risk management. The company’s operational risk management team had historically focused primarily on loss recovery, looking at how the cost of assets could be protected through insurance. In 2006, however, Vale’s risk managers saw that they needed to take a broader view by identifying potential events or circumstances that might impede their company from achieving its business objectives, assessing those issues in terms of their likelihood and magnitude, determining preventive or remedial actions, and then monitoring the progress of those actions to completion. The Operational Risk team at Vale recognized that the success of their evolving strategy would depend upon their ability to collect, aggregate and analyze vast quantities of information from across the company so they established a framework for integrated risk management.

Sipchem, a globally recognized chemical manufacturer in Saudi Arabia, has always been committed to safety and environmental responsibility. The company continually works to follow international standards and improve processes surrounding safety, health, the environment, and security. In 2011, it became the first chemical manufacturing company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to achieve the prestigious Responsible Care® certification. However, by 2011, the company was looking to take the next step. It wanted to adhere to industry best practices by implementing a new Management of Change (MOC) solution to improve its ability to ensure that the recommended changes were completed and implemented properly. The company had previously used several simple workflow systems to manage change. While these solutions could manage basic workflows, they were not designed by plant safety experts and lacked the sophistication to handle the change management processes and sub-processes necessary for chemical plants.

Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), New Jersey’s oldest and largest investor-owned utility provider, was facing a growing burden of regulatory mandates regarding air, water, and waste emissions. The company was committed to ensuring full compliance with these regulations, but the proliferation of mandates was becoming increasingly challenging. Each of PSEG's plants had its own set of systems, often heavily customized and specific to local operations, and used its own methods to manually compile reports on its environmental performance. This resulted in a fragmented and inefficient system. Furthermore, the knowledge of exactly how information was being captured and aggregated typically remained with a single environmental professional at each plant, creating a risk in cases of staff turnover.

Santee Cooper, South Carolina's largest power producer, faced increasing pressures from stricter environmental regulations and internal changes such as employee retirements. The company had a large number of paper forms, spreadsheets, and databases across the company, and needed a central database for consistent and accurate environmental information. The reporting needs had increased and there were more regulations in the pipeline with final rulings coming. The company needed an Environmental Management Information System (EMIS) to manage the current requirements more efficiently and deal proactively with the next generation of environmental demands. Furthermore, the company was undergoing operational adjustments due to organizational and personnel changes, including the shutdown of four coal-fired generating units, which required a lot of change with roles, responsibilities, and people all being shifted between various stations and locations.

Eglin Air Force Base, the largest base in the U.S. Air Force, conducts a wide range of mission-critical activities, many of which involve the use of chemical materials and generate waste materials. These materials are regulated under local, state, and federal environmental, health, and safety (EHS) regulations. In addition, base personnel must maintain compliance with Air Force standards, some of which are even more stringent than comparable federal government mandates. The challenge was to implement a material management system that would meet USAF Mission Readiness requirements, comply fully with federal, state, and military EHS regulations and ISO 14001 standards, and minimize the burden of compliance processes on base operations, aligning with overall goals.

The Red River Army Depot (RRAD) is a large-scale production complex that serves as an ammunition depot storage site and maintenance facility for various military vehicles. Many of its storage and maintenance processes require the use of numerous chemicals or materials that generate significant quantities of waste. RRAD’s Environmental Division staff members carefully track and manage thousands of transactions involving material receipt, inventory and waste generation to assure full compliance with state, federal and U.S. Army regulations. The challenge was to manage a high volume of hazardous materials and waste in compliance with state, federal and military regulations, provide up-to-the-minute visibility into the status and location of materials & waste onsite, and identify opportunities to reduce materials inventory, thereby eliminating the need for waste disposal.

The pharmaceutical company, with clinical research conducted in more than 50 countries and manufacturing plants in over 12 countries, identified an opportunity to improve current processes with the goal of reducing product defects across its worldwide operations. The company lacked a centralized tool to capture requirements or to conduct risk assessments for hundreds of their products within many product families. As a result, in order to meet regulatory guidelines, the company maintained multiple spreadsheets as well as Process Flow Documents which were over 100-pages long for each product family! This created a very complex and cumbersome process. In addition, since the information was contained in multiple sources, there were no linkages between the requirements and controls, and the content was difficult to search and query. It also meant reliance on a few experts who could assess the relationships between all these elements.

The semiconductor manufacturer, with several business units spanning three continents, lacked a consistent process for managing risk related to the thousands of products it produces. Each business entity had its own homegrown solution, leading to inconsistency in information across the enterprise. The semiconductor business is complex due to the variety of products and the many risk analyses performed at various levels. An unmitigated risk at the smallest level could have a huge impact on something at a much higher level. The company needed a centralized operational risk management solution.

The U.S. Military Maintenance Facility (IMF) is responsible for maintaining and modernizing the fleet of submarines. The maintenance process involves the use of many materials classified as hazardous, so effectively managing these materials is critical to worker safety and regulatory compliance. The HazMat team is responsible for the inventory of approximately 1,100 types of hazardous materials. The team coordinates the annual distribution of $885,000 worth of hazardous materials to approximately 90 civilian shops that perform the work on its transport vehicles. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) has the overall responsibility for the management of the Hazardous Material Management System (HMMS) program for the Department of Defense (DoD) and other federal government facilities. DLA requires an enterprise solution to manage Hazardous Material (HM) and Hazardous Waste (HW).

Apache Corporation, one of the world's top independent Oil & Gas Exploration & Production companies, faced significant challenges in managing its materials data. The company's rapid expansion through a series of acquisitions between 1992 and 2012 resulted in operations spread across multiple regions. This led to excessive back-and-forth communication between the centralized catalog team and the regional business units to clarify local material requirements. The situation was further complicated by a lack of 24/7 availability and time zone issues that impacted service levels. In 2008, Apache deployed a single SAP instance with a focus on master data. However, data cleansing was ineffective due to a lack of standards and data governance. By 2010, poor data quality had created significant inventory management, reporting, and sourcing issues, leading to user dissatisfaction.

In 2014, CertainTeed made a strategic decision to consolidate its various ERP systems across its business divisions into a single instance of SAP - to also include SAP’s Enterprise Asset Management (EAM). At the time of the decision, each business operated independently, often using their own management systems. There was little cooperation, and plants typically did not share data. CertainTeed recognized that to support their SAP implementation, they would need to consolidate and standardize their Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO) material master data. This included the optimization of over 250,000 material records for 60 facilities across 5 divisions in the United States and Canada.

Meridian, a renewable energy company, was faced with increased stakeholder interest in its own energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The company wanted to move to best-practice carbon and energy reporting and saw a growing need to provide more accurate reports on emissions as well as credible reduction initiatives. This would help to communicate with key stakeholders in a confident and authentic manner. However, Meridian’s GHG accounting system was a spreadsheet-based solution requiring manual data entry, multiple checks and re-checks and frequent requests to update data. It was an inefficient system that posed credibility risks through data integrity issues and made analysis difficult.