While manufacturers generally understand the importance of meeting compliance requirements, many are challenged with integrating compliance processes with their existing business processes, as well as equipping themselves to adequately address new forms of enterprise safety and risk issues. A 2008 IBM study found that 58% of all companies surveyed had experienced high-risk incidents in the last three years, in some cases causing a financial impact of up to $1.5 billion USD. Further, in spite of experiencing these significant business events today, less than one-third of these very same companies consider themselves prepared for future high-risk incidents.*

Unfortunately, most regulations are developed only after high-risk events occur, leading to inadequate protection from new forms of risk that threaten global business operations. To compete on a sustainable basis, companies are increasingly realising that a flexible and seamlessly integrated IT approach is needed to anticipate unforeseen threats to their operations. Core to this need is the ability to gain greater visibility and implement standard processes for all their operations. Using a global system to manage the operations of multiple countries for health and safety, emissions, environmental compliance, combined with an effective maintenance and operations approach, companies can reduce risk and improve process efficiency.

As a result, they realise:

• More predictable levels of compliance
• Systemic cost savings
• Increased corporate sustainability performance
• Improved safety for employees, assets, and the environment

SAP understands this challenge. With our applications, services, and partners, you can confront these issues and reduce compliance and safety risks, while increasing overall business performance.

Solutions and Services for Enabling Asset Safety and Compliance

Companies worldwide are using SAP solutions and services to manage asset safety and compliance performance for their enterprise. Utilising job-specific dashboards, they are reducing incidents by accessing operational procedures, key performance indicators, and performance trend data for their area of responsibility. By tracking leading and lagging indicators to gain visibility into issues, you can send notifications automatically if operations vary from the expected performance levels.

Through a variety of integrated solutions – including environment, health, and safety, environmental compliance, enterprise asset management, reliability-centered maintenance, work clearance management, manufacturing integration, business intelligence, risk management, enterprise resource planning, enterprise learning and integrated platform – you can gain visibility across your corporation, as well as access performance data to ensure safety, compliance, and risks are being managed within acceptable ranges.

By integrating asset safety, risk, and compliance information, operations can be improved. With SAP NetWeaver, you can benefit from greater operational flexibility through service-oriented architecture and solutions integration. SAP's services and consulting groups are committed to help you every step of the way, enabling you to quickly and efficiently connect systems in multiple locations. With information-rich tools, dashboards, and resources, SAP can help you understand how to efficiently navigate your IT landscape to maximise your investment in asset safety and compliance solutions.

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*"Achieving Safe & Reliable Operations Using an End-to-End View of Enterprise Risk Management", IBM Institute for Business Value Presentation, May 2008.