Global cosmetics company addresses GHS compliance while realizing significant savings with a cloud hosted label printing solution

Background

Our customer is a world leader in direct sales of cosmetics and beauty products with over $10 billion in annual revenue. The company has operations in more than 100 countries with over six million dealerships and a product line that includes color cosmetics, skincare, fragrance, and fashion and home products.

Existing Label Printing Environment

Label printing was conducted separately at each of the Company’s global locations. The Company obtained regulatory label data from a third party Safety Data Sheet (SDS) authoring system. They used thermal transfer printers and had many users printing labels.

Business Goals

The main goal of the Company’s labeling initiative was to comply with legislation and the implementation of the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS).

Challenges

Compliance With GHS Standards

GHS is an internationally agreed-upon system created by the United Nations. It required manufacturers, importers, downstream users and distributors of chemical substances and mixtures to adopt the standard by June 1, 2015. The intent of GHS is to unify the communication of hazardous products and replace existing country specific regulations by providing agreed criteria for classification of chemical hazards and a standardized approach to label elements and SDS. As part of the cosmetics manufacturing process, the Company handles both hazardous and nonhazardous chemicals. Many countries, regulatory bodies and agencies that the Company does business with had already deployed systems to meet some or all of the goals established by GHS. These systems however, were not always compatible, which forced the Company to keep multiple label schemes to meet the demands of various regulatory agencies in the U.S. like the OSHA, EPA, DOT and CPSC and as well as those of the countries to which they export product.

Foreign Languages

The Company faced foreign language challenges. Labels created in Portuguese couldn’t be translated and understood when shipments reached their destination in other countries. The Company runs a global business, so it was important for GHS compliant labeling to extend throughout the entire enterprise, across both geographic and language boundaries.

Disparate Data Sources and Systems

Each of the Company’s global locations maintained its own system and database containing product information. When a product ingredient changed, updates had to be made at each location. A central location handled quality assurance for each of the various sites, adding complexity to the process. The Company had limited control over how and when updates were made. They needed to centralize control of their product databases.

Difficulty In Managing Label Template Variations

The Company’s third party SDS provider advised them on GHS compliance and regulatory data had to be manually distributed. The Company’s expanding product line paired with evolving GHS regulatory requirements resulted in the generation of over 110,000 labels per month. The Company needed to reduce the number of labels to a more manageable number.

Solutions

GHS Compliance

NiceLabel enables the Company to easily comply with GHS regulations across all of its many locations. The solution includes a graphical label designer that allows business users to easily design GHS compliant label templates. Templates were created for hazardous and non-hazardous materials with hazardous product labels containing the required GHS pictograms and other mandatory GHS elements such as; product identifier, signal word, hazard statements, precautionary statements, and supplier information.

Foreign Language Support

The NiceLabel software houses each label in the various languages that are required by the Company. All language assignments are managed within the solution so that compliant shipments can be made in each country’s native language. The solution’s user interface can also change to any language for operators in different countries.

Centralized Labeling

With the NiceLabel cloud solution, all product and ingredient data is managed in a centralized database. The SDS provider keeps regulatory information on raw materials and ingredients stored in a data repository and easily connects to NiceLabel to automatically update the latest regulatory information in the Company’s cloud database. This centralized system ensures all printed labels contain the most current product and regulatory information, all while being easily accessible from the Company’s various locations around the globe. NiceLabel centrally controls and standardizes all label data across the organization regardless of which facility they are printing from, or which languages are used. Controlled role-based access allows certain users to have the flexibility to easily add, delete and edit product attributes on label forms from within the solution at any location across the globe.

Label Consolidation

The Company no longer needs to use hundreds of thousands of labels. With NiceLabel, the Company uses six GHS compliant smart universal templates that connect to the appropriate regulatory information from the SDS provider. These smart universal templates have business rules that select the correct pictograms, signal words, precautionary statements, hazard statements, chemical name and customer specific data in multiple languages. The relative positioning of objects based on the position of other objects helped reduce the number of label templates required.

Web Printing And Scalability

The Company now utilizes NiceLabel’s web printing technology with client-side processing and printer management. Client-side processing means that print streams and print previews are generated by the local PC (client-side) and not by the remote server which would introduce a time lag and network traffic. Client-side printer management allows local users to use any Microsoft Windows printer driver, control the settings locally and not be restricted by what printers the server supports.

Results

With NiceLabel, achieving GHS compliance was easy. The Company is now confident that business will not be disrupted as regulatory requirements change in the various countries in which they do business.

Reduced Errors

Users print correct up-to-date and accurate labels because they are retrieving labels and data from a centralized cloud solution.

Reduced Operational Costs

The Company can immediately access the specific labels they need. This translates into less downtime, reduced set up times and faster production. IT costs have dropped because the Company doesn’t need as many technology and infrastructure resources.

Increased Agilty and Control

The Company is able to centrally control and instantly deploy changes to label templates or label printing solutions anywhere across the globe. They no longer use multiple fragmented solutions with duplicated and incorrect data.

Label Consolidation

Thousands of labels have been consolidated into six universal GHS templates. The administrative burden of managing countless label variations has been eliminated.

Eliminated Processing Delays

The customer now has instant first label out printing to any printer, real-time print previews, and no server-side processing and delays. Users adjust their own printer settings and leverage their printer’s full capabilities.