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Case Studies
KMG Electronic Chemicals Electrified by 3E’s Fast and Reliable MSDS Authoring Service
KMG Chemicals Inc.
Background
KMG Electronic Chemicals, Inc., supplies acids, solvents, and other chemicals used in the manufacture of semiconductors primarily from its state of the art facility in Pueblo, Colorado. Customers use these products to etch and clean wafers at each production layer. In Europe, its subsidiary, KMG Italia S.r.l., operates from a manufacturing and warehouse facility near Milan, Italy. KMG Electronic Chemicals, Inc. is a subsidiary of KMG Chemicals, Inc. (NASDAQ: KMGB.
Challenges
In 2008, KMG acquired the High-Purity Process Chemicals business of Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. As a result of the acquisition, KMG needed to quickly develop Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) for its newly-acquired products, to replace Air Products’ existing MSDSs. The MSDSs needed to be authored for the entire global product line, which encompasses over 200 individual products. Approximately 520 MSDSs needed to be authored, for products shipped in the US, Canada, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, China and more than 25 other countries in Europe and elsewhere. The project had an extremely tight deadline for completion, as KMG needed to supply the new MSDSs to all their customers by the end of 2008. KMG thus began searching for a proven and reliable authoring service that could produce 520 accurate MSDSs in a four month time span.
“Once our acquisition of Air Products was complete, we began researching authoring solutions very quickly as we were working with an iron-clad deadline. All of our MSDSs needed to completed, translated and available on our Web site in multiple languages by the end of the year,” said Roger Jackson, Vice President and General Counsel, KMG Electronic Chemicals.
“We considered 3E along with two other authoring services. We chose 3E for two reasons: the impressive breadth of their product and service offerings, and because we wanted a truly global service that could efficiently produce documents in multiple languages,” said Mr. Jackson.
Solutions
3E's own multi-lingual staff of dedicated, highly qualified MSDS authors worked together to quickly create and analyze KMG's MSDSs. Together, the 3E team ensured that the MSDSs were globally compliant with the regulatory and language requirements for the more than 50 countries in which KMG conducts business. 3E's multi-lingual authors are 3E employees, not sub-contractors or consultants, and were directly accessible to KMG throughout the MSDS production process.
The authors actually authored KMG’s documents on MSDgen, 3E Company’s MSDS authoring system. MSDgen is fueled by 3E’s Ariel chemical regulatory data, used by the world's top chemical manufacturers.
Once the MSDSs were completed, 3E created a custom, hosted MSDS Pull Distribution Web site for KMG so that KMG’s customers could pull MSDSs directly from the Company’s Web site. The seamless hosting application provides access to MSDSs via a custom part of KMG's own Web site. The site is hosted by 3E and can be launched from KMG's Web site. This enables end-users to retrieve MSDSs by product identifiers that KMG defined. The extremely intuitive interface minimizes the number of keystrokes and steps required to retrieve the MSDS for the selected product, relevant regulatory jurisdiction, and desired language. Additionally, users have live, 24-7-365 access to 3E to either help them navigate to the desired document or request that the desired document be faxed or emailed to them.
KMG also utilized 3E’s MSDS Push Distribution service to ensure that the new MSDSs were sent to their customers in accordance with the regulatory requirements for the jurisdictions in which sales are made.
3E also supplied KMG with a data export from MSDgen to populate their labeling software application for the creation of container labels and their ERP application for the creation of bills of lading. The export includes translated risk and safety phrases for shipments outside the US.
Results
“We have been very satisfied with 3E’s MSDS authoring and distribution services. 3E hit the mark – we were able to get all of our MSDSs authored on an extremely tight deadline,” said Mr. Jackson.
“We are very pleased with the quality of the documents their authors produced as well. The quality of the actual end product – the MSDSs – was excellent. The people we worked with were highly competent and dedicated to achieving our objectives. I would definitely recommend 3E to companies that are searching for a reliable and reputable authoring service,” continued Mr. Jackson.
Location: Pueblo, CO
3E Services: Ariel MSDS Authoring, 3E MSDS Hosting & Push Distribution
Industry/Market: Electronic chemicals
Company Web Site: http://www.kmgb.com/