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Case Studies
Adhesives and Sealants Leader Bostik Sticks with 3E Company's MSDgen for MSDS Authoring, Management and Distribution
Bostik
Background
Bostik is a leading provider of adhesives and sealants for consumer, professional and industrial applications. The company is constantly expanding its innovative product line, as adhesives and sealants are a very dynamic technological field. Bostik’s long established technological know-how has helped the company create new applications for adhesives, and expand the use of adhesive bonding, through increased strength and durability, ease of application, user friendliness and environmental awareness.
Bostik is committed to conducting its activities around the globe in a manner that safeguards the health and safety of its employees, its customers and the general public, and while preserving natural resources. During the initial research stage Bostik integrates environmental, health and safety (EH&S) criteria directly into the product development. Further down the line, the Company applies the same degree of rigor to the packaging, labeling, preparation of safety documents (material safety data sheets), and transport in order to guarantee optimum conditions for the storage, shipment and use of its products.
Challenges
With a team of four responsible for regulatory affairs, Bostik is well-positioned to implement its global EH&S compliance program. However, even with an experienced team dedicated to regulatory affairs and EH&S compliance, the EH&S group was having trouble staying abreast of the complex and ever-changing regulatory requirements and what impact these new and revised regulations had on the content of the company’s material safety data sheets (MSDSs).
“Most companies are resource challenged, even with a dedicated EH&S team. Effectively tracking the multitude of regulations that can and do affect your company can be a daunting task,” said Mike Simon, regulatory affairs, Bostik. “It’s tough to keep up with all of the regulations while simultaneously monitoring their impact on your compliance program. To compound the problem, the number of regulations is constantly expanding on a global level.”
With multiple locations and hundreds of employees around the globe, the scope of Bostik’s EH&S compliance program is vast. A critical component of the program entails ensuring that MSDSs are accurate and accessible to both customers and employees. In the past, Bostik’s MSDSs were generated from the company’s information management system because that is where the raw material information was stored. Unfortunately, while this allowed for efficient handling of composition information, all of the health and regulatory information had to be added manually. Needless to say, document consistency and speed suffered greatly.
As a result, the EH&S team began to seek another solution.
Solutions
Bostik turned to HSE Systems, now part of 3E Company, for more information about its MSDgen enterprise MSDS software for the authoring, management, and distribution of MSDSs. They discovered that using MSDgen would make it easier to author, manage, and deliver MSDSs in an environment of rapid change. Ultimately they opted to implement the MSDgen solution over other authoring tools on the market because it offered access to top-tier regulatory content and would help streamline and standardize the authorizing process.
Utilizing MSDgen to generate MSDSs is fast and efficient. The Bostik team manages 15,000 MSDSs and 3,000 raw materials within MSDgen. The turnaround time for authoring and publishing a new MSDS ranges from as little as one hour to a few hours, depending on the complexity of the MSDS. As a global company, Bostik currently uses MSDgen to publish MSDSs in 22 languages and in multiple formats to meet the compliance requirements of the countries where Bostik is doing business.
Additionally, Bostik’s MSDSs are now available online to employees through its corporate Intranet, and to customers through the Internet, both of which are powered by MSDgen. The company’s full catalog of MSDSs is only one click away and available at any time. This “always-on” system ensures that MSDSs are updated or revised immediately when changes occur. The updated MSDSs are then published and made available to Bostik’s facilities around the world.
""We've worked together with our MSDgen team to integrate MSDgen into our corporate product stewardship processes, enabling MSDgen to compare composition of products against various regulations,"" said Mr. Simon.
“As the regulatory world is changing all the time, the software that companies use to meet their regulatory compliance needs should change as well,” continued Mr. Simon. “Our MSDgen team has always proactively made the modifications necessary to MSDgen so that we can meet the needs of those requirements in a timely manner and still satisfy our business requirements.”
Results
Bostik has been using MSDgen since 1999 and the company has been consistently impressed with the results they have achieved. “Speed, consistency, and the level of detail that we are now able to provide our customers are among the most significant improvements being realized within Bostik since the implementation of MSDgen,” said Mr. Simon.
“I am really impressed by the vast amount of regulatory expertise that is available to us as 3E customers,” continued Mr. Simon. “I am confident that our team keeps us up to date.”
Mr. Simon has also appreciated the excellent customer service he receives from the MSDgen team. “Our MSDgen team has taken the time to get to know us and learn how we’re using MSDgen,” said Mr. Simon. “The team has always been extremely amenable to our suggestions for improvement. Our team is accessible and available when we’re trying to solve a problem or work on a complex project. I am extremely confident in our team’s capabilities.”
Location: Several locations Worldwide
3E Services: MSDgen
Industry/Market: Adhesives and Sealants
Company Web Site: http://www.bostik.com