Depending
on severity, product compliance issues can cause all sorts of problems from
run-away budgets to business closures. But
effective policies and safeguards can create a strong foundation for innovation,
productivity, market penetration and competitive advantage. If you’ve been putting off a systematic
approach to product compliance, it is time to reconsider that decision, or
indecision.
Why
now? No matter what industry, companies face a
litany of worldwide and regional regulations that require proof of product
compliance and environmental friendliness for market access. For example, Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) is a regulation that restricts the use of six
dangerous materials used in the manufacture of electronic and electrical
equipment. ROHS was originally adopted
by the European Union in 2003 for implementation in 2006, and it has evolved
over time through various regional versions for North America, China, Japan,
Korea, Norway and Turkey. In addition, the
RoHS directive allowed for material exemptions used in Medical Devices, but that
exemption ends in 2014. Additional
regulations worth watching are the Battery
Directive, Waste Electrical and Electronic
Equipment (WEEE),
and Registration, Evaluation, Authorization
and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) directives. Additional evolving regulations are coming
from governing bodies like the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) and the International
Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Corporate
sustainability initiatives are also gaining urgency and influencing product
design. In a survey of 405 corporations in
the Global 500 by Carbon Disclosure Project, co-written by PwC (CDP Global 500
Climate Change Report 2012 entitled Business
Resilience in an Uncertain, Resource-Constrained World), 48% of the respondents indicated they
saw potential to create new products and business services as a response to
climate change. Just 21% reported a dedicated budget for the research. However,
the report goes on to explain that those few companies are winning over new customers
and driving additional profits by exploiting their abilities to adapt to
environmental needs. The article cites
Dell as an example – Dell has invested in research to develop new products
designed to reduce its customers’ emissions by more than 10 million metric tons
of CO2e per year. This
reduction in emissions should save Dell’s customers over $1billion per year as
a result! Over time we expect to see
many additional companies prove that eco-design provides marketplace benefits
through differentiation and direct customer value.
How
do you meet compliance requirements and also successfully invest in
eco-friendly designs? No doubt companies
struggle to answer this question. After
all, the journey to get there may involve transforming business models,
go-to-market strategies, supply networks, quality assurance policies and
compliance processes per the rapidly evolving global and regional directives. There may be limited executive focus on the
initiative, inability to quantify noncompliance, or not enough resources to justify
investment. To make things even more difficult
to address, compliance responsibility can be a passionate topic within an
organization, making the prospect of change on an enterprise scale problematic
and time-consuming. Without a single
source of truth for product data and without proper processes in place,
ensuring product compliance burgeons into a crushing task that is cost-prohibitive
and overwhelming to an organization. With
all the overhead, certain markets or demographics become simply inaccessible. Therefore, the risk to consumer goodwill and
satisfaction, revenue, business continuity, and market potential is too great
not to solve the compliance challenge. Companies
are beginning to adapt and even thrive in today’s highly regulated and transparent
environment by implementing systematic approaches to product compliance that are
more than functional bandages but revenue-generating engines.
Consider
partnering with Oracle to help you address your compliance needs. Many of the world’s most innovative leaders
and pioneers are leveraging Oracle’s Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
portfolio of enterprise applications to manage the product value chain,
centralize product data, automate processes, and launch more eco-friendly
products to market faster. Particularly, the Agile Product
Governance & Compliance (PG&C) solution provides out-of-the-box
functionality to integrate actionable regulatory information into the
enterprise product record from the ideation to the disposal/recycling phase. Agile PG&C makes it possible to efficiently
manage compliance per corporate green initiatives as well as regional and
global directives.
Options
are critical, but so is ease-of-use. Anyone
who’s grappled with compliance policy knows legal interpretation plays a major
role in determining how an organization responds to regulation. Agile PG&C gives you the freedom to configure
product compliance per your needs, while maintaining rigorous control over the
product record in an easy-to-use interface that facilitates adoption efforts. It allows you to assign regulations as
specifications for a part or BOM roll-up. Each specification has a threshold value that alerts you to a
non-compliance issue if the threshold value is exceeded. Set however many regulations as
specifications you need to make sure a product can be sold in your target
countries. Another option is to implement
like one of our leading consumer electronics customers and define your own “catch-all”
specification to ensure compliance in all markets. You can give your suppliers secure access to
enter their component data or integrate a third party’s data. With Agile PG&C you are able to design
compliance earlier into your products to reduce cost and improve quality
downstream when stakes are higher.
Agile
PG&C is a comprehensive solution that makes product compliance more
reliable and efficient. Throughout
product lifecycles, use the solution to support full material disclosures, efficiently
manage declarations with your suppliers, feed compliance data into a corrective
action if a product must be changed, and swiftly satisfy audits by showing all
due diligence tracked in one solution.
Given
the compounding regulation and consumer focus on urgent environmental issues, now
is the time to act. Implementing an enterprise,
systematic approach to product compliance is a competitive investment. From the start, Agile Product Governance
& Compliance enables companies to confidently design for compliance and
sustainability, reduce the cost of compliance, minimize the risk of business
interruption, deliver responsible products, and inspire new innovation. Don’t
wait any longer!
To
find out more about Agile Product Governance & Compliance download the data
sheet, contact your sales representative, or call Oracle at 1-800-633-0738.
Many thanks to Shane Goodwin, Senior Manager, Oracle Agile PLM Product Management, for contributions to this article.
