Three major challenges for chemical manufacturer labels

Today's chemical manufacturer faces a wide range of requirements that complicate labeling and enable many companies to accept their current processes as the cost of doing business. But it's not necessary. Here are three of the most common tagging challenges, along with some useful tips and effective ways to overcome them.

Compliance with GHS and other regulatory requirements

Even in the United States, OSHA's GHS label deadline comes and goes, and the company is still trying to comply. Countries and regions have also stipulated GHS international guidelines that must be observed. Of course, the challenge for GHS and other regulations is to manage all the information on each label. Not only do you need accurate data, including hazard statements and transaction data, but you also have to adapt to a wide variety of symbols, color printing, products and containers of different sizes, and multiple languages.

In order to accurately create GHS labels, chemical manufacturer usually needs to extract data from multiple systems. They may rely on a record source such as SAP or Oracle, and at least one system for regulatory information. There are other systems that can also play a role, such as warehouse management (WMS), manufacturing execution (MES), laboratory systems and product lifecycle management (PLM), etc. A good label system that meets good manufacturing practice can retrieve the data of the same label from multiple systems without manually copying the information.

Print and support different languages

The chemical supply chain is as complex and global as any industrial supply chain. Companies need to manage raw materials, feed stocks, commodity pricing, regulatory issues, and more - both locally and internationally. In order to ensure the rapid and efficient transfer of products upstream or downstream, the label must be in the mother tongue of the receiving country. There may be other requirements on the label, depending on the destination. For example, China has special labeling requirements that, if not met, could lead to costly delays, fines, and even product returns.

In some cases, companies store specific SKUs for the same product in containers of the same size and use five different labels - each of which meets the specific language and compliance requirements of different regions. Because of the way their systems are used, they have to print labels before shipping, which leads to rising costs of inventory, warehousing, and employee productivity.

There is a better way. By standardizing a single end-to-end label solution with robust design capabilities and configurable business rules, chemical manufacturers can dynamically support label formatting and content changes, including languages. Using this method, chemical companies can label containers in the right language later in the process. This has led some companies to reduce SKU inventory by up to 60%, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs.

Managing variable data on tags

Language is just one of the many changing elements in today's chemical labels. Manufacturers are increasingly being asked to meet additional customer requirements, from special handling instructions and area requirements to barcodes, logos, graphics and other brand elements. Depending on the company's customer, supplier, ticket collector or 3PL base, this label change can be difficult to manage because some manufacturers may have hundreds of unique label templates that they must maintain and update. This will not only lead to inefficiency in time and labor, but also lead to costly mistakes.

Here you need to find a solution for dynamic barcode formats, even in the same business language. By applying business logic to automatically update tags, you can maintain constant variability while greatly reducing the number of templates. In addition, a centralized approach to label creation, sharing and updating across organizations further optimizes the labeling process and improves overall supply chain efficiency.