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For ensuring compliance of products and chemicals to secure the right to market, sell, and ship products, companies must implement numerous regulatory policies, processes, and practices that promote the compliance of products and chemicals. The increasing complexity of global supply chains related to offshoring and outsourcing, coupled with the constant development of new goods, processes, and technologies, has created product compliance challenges in various industries.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud helps to fulfill these requirements and includes adopting proactive and reactive approaches to minimize the likelihood of delivering an unsafe product and to avoid costly penalties.
This blog highlights the many innovations that our SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release has in store for you in the area of Product Compliance. To name just a few highlights:
In case you do not need all the information below and just briefly want to get an overview of the release highlights, please watch this video with the top 3 key innovations:
Release video: SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 for Product Compliance: Top 3 key innovations.
Compliance Data Foundation:
Companies are facing complex and specific regulations in the market. With the ability to validate regulatory compliance early in the product development cycle, you avoid the risk of having to rework formulations containing banned or restricted substances or, worse, recall products if they do not meet regulatory obligations. or customers' requirements.
With the update and enhancement of the integrated regulatory content, you stay compliant with your product portfolio using the most recent regulatory updates.
With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release, SAP provides the following new and updated compliance requirements in each solution area:
Product Marketability:
Safety Data Sheet Management:
Dangerous Goods Management:
Picture 1: With the update and enhancement of the integrated regulatory content, you stay compliant with your product portfolio using the most recent regulatory updates.
Note 1: For more information about SAP Content for Compliance Requirements, please click here to access the SAP Help Portal.
Note 2: The related scope items are: 31G (Chemical Compliance Approval for Purchased Material and Supplier), 31H (Assess Marketability of a Product), 31J (Chemical Compliance in Sales), 3VR (Manage Safety Data Sheets for Products), 3VQ (Safety Data Sheets in Sales), 3FC (Assess Dangerous Goods for a Product), 3G8 (Dangerous Goods in Sales)
Product Marketability:
In many countries, regulations state that, above a certain quantity of chemicals and other hazardous substances, you must register with the authorities the maximum quantities of these substances that you plan to purchase, import, produce, sell, or export in a certain period.
The goal of substance volume tracking is to help you comply with chemical regulations according to which you must track and monitor the volumes of regulated substances that you import to, export to, or produce in a country/region within a certain period of time.
Substance volume tracking is integrated with the logistics processes for purchasing, manufacturing, and sales. It tracks, calculates, aggregates, and monitors the imported, produced, and exported substance volumes that result from these processes.
By comparing the recorded quantities with the limit values, the system can warn you in good time before a limit value is exceeded. If a limit value is exceeded, the system can also block the respective business process. This means you can ensure that you stay below the quantity limits.
With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release, we introduce the Monitoring of Volumes of Substances that are Exported to a Country or Region and with this feature you can get an overview of the aggregated volumes of substances that are exported to a country/region by a legal entity in your company.
Demo 1: Substance Volume Tracking enable customers to monitor the volumes of substances which are exported to a country or region (including audio).
Substance volume tracking supports the following functions:
You need more information on this? Read the following What’s New Document and Product Assistance.
Product Marketability:
Compliance with dangerous goods regulations is an important component of product compliance to ensure safe transportation of dangerous goods and with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, we integrate the dangerous goods data and classifications in the logistic processes. We have this integration, for example, in the sales order process.
With the 2108 release, a dangerous goods check is now integrated into the processing of the purchase order with transport responsibility.
In Product Compliance, you can assess suppliers and set a status to indicate if a supplier is approved or blocked. This information is used in a check that considers the status of the supplier assessment of compliance-relevant products during the creation of the purchase order documents:
If a product has been marked as relevant for compliance in the product master, the system checks the supplier assessment as the purchasing document is created or edited.
Depending on the outcome of this check, the system issues warnings, blocks items, or entire documents.
Picture 2: Checking of all compliance-relevant products to determine whether procurement is allowed from a supplier point of view.
To use the integration functions, the following scope item must be active: 5OJ (Supplier Compliance in the Value Chain).
Depending on the type of documents being checked, the system issues warnings, blocks items or entire documents. The potential check results are the following:
Dangerous Goods Management
With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 release, we introduced the management of regulatory graphics.
In regulations for hazardous substances, such as the Global Harmonized System (GHS), or in dangerous goods regulations, graphics are used to convey specific information. The GHS uses pictograms to alert users of the exposure dangers when handling a hazardous substance. The pictograms are, for example, required on the labels of hazardous chemical products.
In dangerous goods regulations, graphics are used on labels and markings to, for example, provide the main information regarding the characteristics and dangers associated with the dangerous goods and how to handle a package.
Now with the 2108 release we introduce a new labeling section for labels and markings for packages.
Labeling, marking, and placarding are important steps when preparing a dangerous good for transportation. Labels, markings, and placards visualize hazards associated with the dangerous good and communicate information about safe handling. With this feature, you can add labeling, marking, and placarding information in the Classify Dangerous Good - Packaged Product app. You can select additional hazard labels and you can select additional handling labels and markings for packages and for containers, tanks, and vehicles.
To support you in your dangerous goods classification process, you can use the new Determine Labels feature. With this feature, the system determines applicable labels using specific, predefined rules, and automatically fills the labeling section with the determined labels. You can adapt the determined labels if needed.
Graphics used in Product Compliance are delivered as content by SAP. The graphics are grouped in graphic collections and are assigned to a compliance requirement version. Those collections can be viewed in the Manage Regulatory Graphics app.
Demo 2: Provide labeling and placarding information to be compliant with the dangerous goods regulations (including audio).
In addition to the enhanced labeling, the following features have been added or enhanced:
Hazard Notes:
With this feature, you can add hazard notes that are included in the description for documents. The description templates have been adapted to print the hazard notes on documents using the <<HAZARD_NOTES>> placeholder.
Supplement Information for Dangerous Goods Description:
With this feature, you can add supplemental information for the dangerous goods description for documents if required by dangerous goods regulation or by company-specific requirements. The description templates have been adapted to print the supplement information on documents using the <<DG_DESCRIPTION_SUPPLEMENT>> placeholder.
Safety Data Sheet Management:
Legal areas are used in product compliance to define, for example, legal compositions, legal deviations from material-based compositions, or to specify how to use the product.
For each legal area, you can now assign the country/region for which the legal area is relevant.
Remark: SAP provides the standard legal area (World) representing a legal area that is generally valid.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_eaqhqyok
Demo 3: Increased compliance for safety data sheets based on country/region (including audio).
In the Specify Legal Areas for Product Compliance activity, you can now assign for each legal area the country/region for which the legal area is relevant. If you want to change the settings, search for the following activity in your configuration environment: Specify Legal Areas for Product Compliance.
Safety Data Sheet Management:
In many countries, the regulation specifies that chemical manufacturers or importers shall ensure that distributors and employers are provided an appropriate safety data sheet with their initial shipment, and with the first shipment after a safety data sheet is updated. In the same way, the chemical manufacturer or importer shall also provide distributors or employers with a safety data sheet upon request.
Now with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release, we fulfill this legal requirement and we enhanced the Compliance Information for Products app, used shows information about the availability of safety data sheets for the different countries and regions, with a new feature in witch you can manually start the shipment process for a safety data sheet to a business partner.
Demo 4: Provides new possibilities for shipping safety data sheets to customers (including audio).
Safety Data Sheet Management:
With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release, we enable customers to manage data for SDS section 1 for safety data sheets, labels, and reports. You can also use this data for the classification of products according to different hazardous substances or dangerous goods regulations.
Can now enter and edit address data as well as the emergency phone number for safety data sheets. In addition, you can also enter a logo that has been selected from the Manage Logo app. This information is required in section 1.3 of a safety data sheet and can also be used for the coversheet when shipping safety data sheets.
Just as a reminder:
Picture 3: Enable customers to manage data for SDS section 1 for safety data sheets, labels, and reports.
With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release, we introduce also updates in SAP Fiori 3 providing a great user experience, guiding first-time users with an SAP Fiori launchpad quick tour, providing a standard My Home space for users to personalize, and we made performance improvements.
Read this blog post from Thomas Reiss to show that we are keeping the momentum going with our evolution of SAP Fiori and the SAP user experience.
https://blogs.sap.com/2021/08/04/sap-fiori-3-update-further-evolution-with-sap-s-4hana-cloud-2108/
Thanks for reading this blog post. Stay tuned!
If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community. This platform which is available to SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers and partners has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
Follow us via @Sisn and #S4HANA, or myself via @VoglerChrist and LinkedIn
SAP S/4HANA Cloud helps to fulfill these requirements and includes adopting proactive and reactive approaches to minimize the likelihood of delivering an unsafe product and to avoid costly penalties.
This blog highlights the many innovations that our SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release has in store for you in the area of Product Compliance. To name just a few highlights:
- Regulatory content update
- Ability to track, calculate, and monitor volumes for substances that are exported to a country/region
- Integration of product compliance checks into purchasing processes
- New labeling section for labels and markings for packages
- Support of manual shipment of safety data sheets
- Product compliance information can be specified for legal areas
- New SAP Fiori apps to maintain data for safety data sheets (SDS), sections 1
- … and more.
In case you do not need all the information below and just briefly want to get an overview of the release highlights, please watch this video with the top 3 key innovations:
Release video: SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 for Product Compliance: Top 3 key innovations.
Compliance Data Foundation:
Regulatory content update
Companies are facing complex and specific regulations in the market. With the ability to validate regulatory compliance early in the product development cycle, you avoid the risk of having to rework formulations containing banned or restricted substances or, worse, recall products if they do not meet regulatory obligations. or customers' requirements.
With the update and enhancement of the integrated regulatory content, you stay compliant with your product portfolio using the most recent regulatory updates.
With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release, SAP provides the following new and updated compliance requirements in each solution area:
Product Marketability:
- 40 new versions or updated compliance requirements with this release
- In total 136 compliance requirements (Substance list check pattern) available now
Safety Data Sheet Management:
- 104 new or updated compliance requirements within this release
- In total 97 compliance requirement for Safety Data Sheets now available
Dangerous Goods Management:
- 8 updated compliance requirements with this release
- In total 14 compliance requirements available now.
Picture 1: With the update and enhancement of the integrated regulatory content, you stay compliant with your product portfolio using the most recent regulatory updates.
Note 1: For more information about SAP Content for Compliance Requirements, please click here to access the SAP Help Portal.
Note 2: The related scope items are: 31G (Chemical Compliance Approval for Purchased Material and Supplier), 31H (Assess Marketability of a Product), 31J (Chemical Compliance in Sales), 3VR (Manage Safety Data Sheets for Products), 3VQ (Safety Data Sheets in Sales), 3FC (Assess Dangerous Goods for a Product), 3G8 (Dangerous Goods in Sales)
Product Marketability:
Monitor Volumes for Substances that are Exported to a Country/Region
In many countries, regulations state that, above a certain quantity of chemicals and other hazardous substances, you must register with the authorities the maximum quantities of these substances that you plan to purchase, import, produce, sell, or export in a certain period.
The goal of substance volume tracking is to help you comply with chemical regulations according to which you must track and monitor the volumes of regulated substances that you import to, export to, or produce in a country/region within a certain period of time.
Substance volume tracking is integrated with the logistics processes for purchasing, manufacturing, and sales. It tracks, calculates, aggregates, and monitors the imported, produced, and exported substance volumes that result from these processes.
By comparing the recorded quantities with the limit values, the system can warn you in good time before a limit value is exceeded. If a limit value is exceeded, the system can also block the respective business process. This means you can ensure that you stay below the quantity limits.
With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release, we introduce the Monitoring of Volumes of Substances that are Exported to a Country or Region and with this feature you can get an overview of the aggregated volumes of substances that are exported to a country/region by a legal entity in your company.
Demo 1: Substance Volume Tracking enable customers to monitor the volumes of substances which are exported to a country or region (including audio).
Features
Substance volume tracking supports the following functions:
- Tracking volumes of imported, exported, and produced substances on a legal entity level and based on the relevant compliance requirements.
- Definition of legal entities and mapping manufacturing, supplying, or receiving plants to these legal entities.
- Substance volume aggregation based on the tracking period of the relevant compliance requirement version.
- Calculation of substance volume tracking status based on the aggregated volumes and the thresholds in the respective compliance requirements.
- Monitoring substance volumes, providing detailed information about the aggregated substance volumes, and tracing information back to the specific logistics document via the Monitor Substance Volumes (F4693) app.
Prerequisites
- To use substance volume tracking, you need to activate the following scope item: 4OL (Substance Volume Tracking)
You need more information on this? Read the following What’s New Document and Product Assistance.
Product Marketability:
Integrating Product Compliance Checks into Purchasing Processes
Compliance with dangerous goods regulations is an important component of product compliance to ensure safe transportation of dangerous goods and with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, we integrate the dangerous goods data and classifications in the logistic processes. We have this integration, for example, in the sales order process.
With the 2108 release, a dangerous goods check is now integrated into the processing of the purchase order with transport responsibility.
In Product Compliance, you can assess suppliers and set a status to indicate if a supplier is approved or blocked. This information is used in a check that considers the status of the supplier assessment of compliance-relevant products during the creation of the purchase order documents:
If a product has been marked as relevant for compliance in the product master, the system checks the supplier assessment as the purchasing document is created or edited.
Depending on the outcome of this check, the system issues warnings, blocks items, or entire documents.
Picture 2: Checking of all compliance-relevant products to determine whether procurement is allowed from a supplier point of view.
Prerequisites
To use the integration functions, the following scope item must be active: 5OJ (Supplier Compliance in the Value Chain).
Behavior of Supplier Check
Depending on the type of documents being checked, the system issues warnings, blocks items or entire documents. The potential check results are the following:
- If the supplier of all items is approved, the document can be processed.
- If the supplier for an item is not approved, the item and, subsequently, the document is blocked.
- For a blocked item, a compliance request for the product stewardship specialist is created to check the assessment of the supplier. If the compliance result of the assessment is positive, the document is unblocked.
Dangerous Goods Management
New labeling section for labels and markings for packages
With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 release, we introduced the management of regulatory graphics.
Background
In regulations for hazardous substances, such as the Global Harmonized System (GHS), or in dangerous goods regulations, graphics are used to convey specific information. The GHS uses pictograms to alert users of the exposure dangers when handling a hazardous substance. The pictograms are, for example, required on the labels of hazardous chemical products.
In dangerous goods regulations, graphics are used on labels and markings to, for example, provide the main information regarding the characteristics and dangers associated with the dangerous goods and how to handle a package.
New with the 2108 Release:
Now with the 2108 release we introduce a new labeling section for labels and markings for packages.
Labeling, marking, and placarding are important steps when preparing a dangerous good for transportation. Labels, markings, and placards visualize hazards associated with the dangerous good and communicate information about safe handling. With this feature, you can add labeling, marking, and placarding information in the Classify Dangerous Good - Packaged Product app. You can select additional hazard labels and you can select additional handling labels and markings for packages and for containers, tanks, and vehicles.
To support you in your dangerous goods classification process, you can use the new Determine Labels feature. With this feature, the system determines applicable labels using specific, predefined rules, and automatically fills the labeling section with the determined labels. You can adapt the determined labels if needed.
Graphics used in Product Compliance are delivered as content by SAP. The graphics are grouped in graphic collections and are assigned to a compliance requirement version. Those collections can be viewed in the Manage Regulatory Graphics app.
Demo 2: Provide labeling and placarding information to be compliant with the dangerous goods regulations (including audio).
Additional Details
In addition to the enhanced labeling, the following features have been added or enhanced:
Hazard Notes:
With this feature, you can add hazard notes that are included in the description for documents. The description templates have been adapted to print the hazard notes on documents using the <<HAZARD_NOTES>> placeholder.
Supplement Information for Dangerous Goods Description:
With this feature, you can add supplemental information for the dangerous goods description for documents if required by dangerous goods regulation or by company-specific requirements. The description templates have been adapted to print the supplement information on documents using the <<DG_DESCRIPTION_SUPPLEMENT>> placeholder.
Safety Data Sheet Management:
Specifying Legal Areas for Product Compliance
Legal areas are used in product compliance to define, for example, legal compositions, legal deviations from material-based compositions, or to specify how to use the product.
For each legal area, you can now assign the country/region for which the legal area is relevant.
Remark: SAP provides the standard legal area (World) representing a legal area that is generally valid.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_eaqhqyok
Demo 3: Increased compliance for safety data sheets based on country/region (including audio).
Effects on Configuration
In the Specify Legal Areas for Product Compliance activity, you can now assign for each legal area the country/region for which the legal area is relevant. If you want to change the settings, search for the following activity in your configuration environment: Specify Legal Areas for Product Compliance.
Safety Data Sheet Management:
Support of Manual Shipment of Safety Data Sheets
In many countries, the regulation specifies that chemical manufacturers or importers shall ensure that distributors and employers are provided an appropriate safety data sheet with their initial shipment, and with the first shipment after a safety data sheet is updated. In the same way, the chemical manufacturer or importer shall also provide distributors or employers with a safety data sheet upon request.
Now with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release, we fulfill this legal requirement and we enhanced the Compliance Information for Products app, used shows information about the availability of safety data sheets for the different countries and regions, with a new feature in witch you can manually start the shipment process for a safety data sheet to a business partner.
Demo 4: Provides new possibilities for shipping safety data sheets to customers (including audio).
Safety Data Sheet Management:
New SAP Fiori apps to maintain data for safety data sheets (SDS), sections 1
With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release, we enable customers to manage data for SDS section 1 for safety data sheets, labels, and reports. You can also use this data for the classification of products according to different hazardous substances or dangerous goods regulations.
Can now enter and edit address data as well as the emergency phone number for safety data sheets. In addition, you can also enter a logo that has been selected from the Manage Logo app. This information is required in section 1.3 of a safety data sheet and can also be used for the coversheet when shipping safety data sheets.
Just as a reminder:
- Section 1: here you provide about the identification of the chemical as well as the recommended uses. It also provides the essential contact information of the supplier.
Picture 3: Enable customers to manage data for SDS section 1 for safety data sheets, labels, and reports.
SAP Fiori 3 update: further evolution with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108
With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release, we introduce also updates in SAP Fiori 3 providing a great user experience, guiding first-time users with an SAP Fiori launchpad quick tour, providing a standard My Home space for users to personalize, and we made performance improvements.
Read this blog post from Thomas Reiss to show that we are keeping the momentum going with our evolution of SAP Fiori and the SAP user experience.
https://blogs.sap.com/2021/08/04/sap-fiori-3-update-further-evolution-with-sap-s-4hana-cloud-2108/
Thanks for reading this blog post. Stay tuned!
If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community. This platform which is available to SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers and partners has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info here
- jan.gilg SAP News Center article here
- Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 Release Blog
- The Link Collection for Product Compliance here
- Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here and previous release highlights here
- Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
- SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
- Early Release Webinar Series here
- Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
- openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA here
- Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community: here
- Feature Scope Description here
- What’s New here
- Help Portal Product Page here
- Implementation Portal here
Follow us via @Sisn and #S4HANA, or myself via @VoglerChrist and LinkedIn
