What are the Benefits of a Chemical Management System for Labs?

November 10, 2019

What is a Chemical Management System? It is a set of rules and processes, aided by technology tools that support lab safety, environmental compliance and policies. A Chemical Management System for Labs, Research and Educational institutions can help enhance productivity, save time, reduce costs while dramatically improving safety and reducing incidents.

Chemical Management Systems include tools that make it easier to:

• Manage and find Safety Data Sheets (SDS) when they are most needed.
• Provide on-site chemical inventory management, tracking the entire lifecycle of every chemical that enters the lab, with the ability to easily find, store, share and finally dispose them.
• Have EHS mobile smart devices like smartphones and tablets that can scan container barcodes to easily identify, update, move and track chemicals.
• Activate a chemical approval process, where properly trained and authorized personnel can acquire and use chemicals in the lab.
• Maintain chemical inventory rules, threshold limits and compatibility monitors that ensure constant compliance with safety and regulatory rules.
• Provide simple and powerful reporting.

A well-designed and implemented Chemical Management System like Chemical Safety’s Environmental Management Systems (EMS) provides tangible benefits at many different levels:

1. Enhanced Productivity. With EMS, lab personnel can easily find needed chemicals available on-site, or directly order, receive and record chemicals in a single process. This saves time and enhances productivity.
2. With immediate access to accurate on-site chemical inventory data, chemical purchasing costs are reduced, which also results in reduced waste disposal costs, while the required time for completing a project is often decreased.
3. Good, accurate and available information on, chemicals-on-hand, corresponding safety data sheets (SDS) and operational rules (chemical approvals, training, storage compatibility) and adherence to inventory limits, dramatically improves lab safety reducing thus incidents and lab accidents.
4. Finally, accurate information delivers correct and timely compliance reports for regulators and management.