Why do you need a chemical inventory system?

Software is an invaluable resource. Since software makes scaling possible and people more productive, you’ve probably seen chemical inventories at your site get more extensive and more complicated over time.

Think of all the things that need to be tracked accurately, such as:

• Peroxide forming chemicals and their expiration dates.
• Flammable compressed gasses.
• EPA extremely hazardous substances (EHS).
• OSHA particularly hazardous substances (PHS).
• Cleaning products, pesticides, adhesives, paints, etc.
• Oxidizers.
• Reproductive toxins.

A software system is the only way to keep up with the staggering amount of data that must be tracked and maintained — but not just any software will do the trick. For example, using spreadsheets instead of actual tracking tools isn’t a scalable solution.

When it comes to managing your entire organization’s chemical inventory, the tool you choose should work today and also be optimized to meet future needs. No one should have to switch systems soon after a large-scale software evaluation process.

Using chemical inventory software should make it easy for you to:

1. Inventory chemicals
2. Find the information you need, even if you’re not sure where to find it.
3. Access a trusted, regularly updated, modern chemical database.
4. Edit hundreds of containers at once.
5. Run a variety of significant reports (e.g., CFATS, Tier II, RTK, IBC).

It should also be simple for laboratory users to regularly input and update their own inventory for you.

Chemical inventory software is risk management software

While these are big concepts, it all comes down to the details. Chemicals can be properly ID’d as peroxide forming chemicals. However, if the expiration date isn’t logged, it still runs the risk of degrading into an explosive substance before someone properly disposes of it. When these risks go unaddressed, your organization’s people, finances, and reputation are all in jeopardy.

It’s paramount that your chemical inventory system makes it easy to track these details and mitigate the resultant risks. Without actionable, real-time, and easily accessible data, it’s challenging to make informed decisions on where to spend your resources.

What to look for in a quality chemical inventory system:

You need to know what chemicals your organization has, in what quantities, where they are, who’s using them, when they expire, and all associated hazards. That’s a huge amount of information to track, organize, analyze, maintain, and locate when you need it — not to mention being able to put all this data into the required regulatory report format. 

If your chemical inventory management is the foundation for a building, then the chemical database is the soil the foundation is dug into. The database’s quality and composition dictate fundamental limits to how good your chemical inventory can be.

We all know the pain of trying to navigate a piece of software that's unintuitive and poorly laid out.

This type of software is time-intensive, draining, and uninviting to use. It’s a combination that’s particularly harmful, as your users are discouraged from regularly updating their chemical inventory.

When you can accurately track your chemical containers, all your downstream efforts become easier, more accurate, and more trustworthy.

The difficulty here is a logistical one. How do you monitor the flux of all the containers, on the range of hundreds to hundreds of thousands? This is a critical place where your chemical inventory management system should be able to do some heavy lifting.

The most important task for your chemical inventory software is providing the information necessary for regulatory reporting. Reports can easily consume an enormous amount of time and resources, given the specific formats and details needed. Having an incomplete or inaccurate report can have serious ramifications.

When you have to deal with all the minutiae of chemical inventory management —container tracking, regulatory reporting, reconciliation, inspections — it can be easy to get lost in the weeds.

Of course, you don’t do all this work for nothing. There’s a bigger picture here, and losing sight of that can lead to nitpicking, frustration, exhaustion, and dissatisfaction. Learn more about chemical safety management by clicking the button below.