As part of a series of SAP sponsored sustainability customer reference interviews, I talked to Dirk Krúger of Dow Corning about how they manage to stay compliant with the many and constantly changing regulations around packaging, production of packaging waste reports and transportation of dangerous goods. This proved very challenging for them in the past but since the rollout of SAP Recycling Administration they have reduced the time to create their packaging waste reports by as much as two months per report.
Check out the interview above and the transcription below to learn more.
Tom Raftery: Hi everyone! Welcome to The GreenMonk TV Sustainability Customer Reference Series, sponsored by SAP. With me is Dirk Krüger from Dow Corning. Dirk, can you start off by telling me first of all a little bit about Dow Corning itself, and then your role within the organization?
Dirk Krüger: Yeah, Dow Corning is a global leader in silicon based technology and working as a global company, we serve, I think, more than 25000 customers worldwide with more than 7000 products. I am working a packaging engineer in the International Trade Compliance team, which is part of the logistics organization in Dow Corning, making sure that Dow Corning complies with all the regulations worldwide on packaging, transportation of dangerous goods, imports and export, documentation.
Tom Raftery: Okay. You mentioned legislation, that your job involves compliance with legislation?
Dirk Krüger: Yeah.
Tom Raftery: What kinds of legislation do you have to comply with?
Dirk Krüger: Yeah. First you have to select the right packaging that is compliant with requirements of the — the requirements for our regulated products. So for flammable liquid, we use stronger packaging, and for non-dangerous goods, this compliance for the regulations and packaging wastes, needs also to be disposed off.
Tom Raftery: What kind of challenges do you meet in your role in Dow Corning and how is SAP helping you overcome those?
Dirk Krüger: More and more of regulations around to products, product responsibility regulations increase globally, and so, therefore we use SAP recycling administration to be in compliance with the regulations by creating the packaging waste reports for the product we put on the marketing.
Tom Raftery: So, what’s a packaging waste report?
Dirk Krüger: In the packaging waste reports we have to summarize so much material of plastic glass, steel, you put on the markets to sell your products in Europe, so every company in Europe has its own reporting. Formula, you have to fill out. It took about between 2 weeks and 2 month to create such a report, depending on the country.
Tom Raftery: Okay.
Dirk Krüger: Okay. And now it’s running overnight and the report is complete.
Tom Raftery: And finally what are your plans for the SAP solution going forward?
Dirk Krüger: To expand the usage to really use it in every country we sell our products, because currently we are just reporting for the European countries, but in Asia for example, we have got more and more regulations in place, like, also for Taiwan. So we will expand the usage of recycling administration.
Tom Raftery: Dirk, that’s been great! Thanks million for talking to us today.