Oper­at­ing safe, sus­tain­able waste man­age­ment pro­grams across one’s enter­prise is a com­pli­cat­ed under­tak­ing, increas­ing­ly so as coun­tries and gov­ern­ing bod­ies reg­u­late and leg­is­late these process­es to min­i­mize eco­log­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal impact.

With­in SAP S/4HANA Envi­ron­men­tal, Health, and Safe­ty (EHS) Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment, new­ly added waste man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties are enabling enter­pris­es to tack­le this grow­ing busi­ness need in an intu­itive man­ner while mit­i­gat­ing their risk. Waste man­age­ment can be chal­leng­ing for small and large enter­pris­es, espe­cial­ly as they pur­sue dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. For small­er enter­pris­es, the labyrinthine per­mit­ting process for waste man­age­ment rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant hur­dle to main­tain­ing reg­u­lar busi­ness oper­a­tions. On the oth­er hand, larg­er enter­pris­es often must con­tend with either an enor­mous amount of waste or leg­is­la­tion and reg­u­la­tions across sev­er­al coun­tries, depend­ing on the scope of their operations. 

In order to help com­pa­nies more effec­tive­ly man­age waste, and in response to ris­ing cus­tomer demand for capa­bil­i­ties to do so through lever­ag­ing cloud ERP, SAP recent­ly rede­vel­oped its waste man­age­ment mod­ule with­in SAP S/4HANA EHS Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment, inte­grat­ing and upgrad­ing what had pre­vi­ous­ly been a sep­a­rate appli­ca­tion from SAP ERP Cen­tral Component.

“The SAP S/4HANA EHS Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment solu­tion helps cus­tomers to ensure they not only have com­pli­ant process­es for man­ag­ing their waste from gen­er­a­tion to dis­pos­al but also sup­ports activ­i­ties such as cost allo­ca­tion and track­ing of costs to dis­pose of wastes,” Hitesh Patel, Prod­uct Man­ag­er for SAP S/4HANA EHS Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment, said in a recent ASUG webi­nar focused on the solution’s waste man­age­ment capabilities.

SAP S/4HANA EHS Waste Man­age­ment Solu­tion Highlights

Patel walked atten­dees through the solution’s waste man­age­ment main­line capa­bil­i­ties and touched on future devel­op­ment. Through­out the hour-long webi­nar, Patel high­light­ed the grow­ing impor­tance of com­ply­ing with numer­ous gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions and high­light­ed how SAP S/4HANA EHS Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment waste man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties can enable enter­pris­es to man­age this com­pli­cat­ed process. 

“Gov­ern­ments around the world have enact­ed many envi­ron­men­tal leg­is­la­tions to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment and ensure the impact of air, water, and land pol­lu­tion is lim­it­ed,” Patel said. 

Some of these laws and reg­u­la­tions deal exclu­sive­ly with waste dis­pos­al, such as the Resource Con­ser­va­tion and Recov­ery Act in the Unit­ed States. This 1976 amend­ment to the Sol­id Waste Act deals with the dis­pos­al of sol­id and haz­ardous waste, ensur­ing com­pa­nies can man­age this process with­out harm­ing human health or dam­ag­ing the environment. 

​“Com­ply­ing with these reg­u­la­tions with­in a coun­try, or even glob­al­ly, would require a very sys­tem­at­ic, trans­par­ent process which can with­stand change,” Patel said. 

How SAP Fits Into the Waste Man­age­ment Process 

Dur­ing the webi­nar, Patel touched on some of the solution’s main capa­bil­i­ties, includ­ing waste iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, onsite waste man­age­ment, ship­ment plan­ning and com­pli­ance, dis­pos­al man­age­ment, and com­pre­hen­sive key-per­for­mance-indi­ca­tor (KPI) report­ing. Patel also gave atten­dees a detailed look at the points through­out the waste man­age­ment busi­ness process where SAP S/4HANA EHS Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment can help cus­tomers man­age and con­trol their waste. 

The first step of this process is iden­ti­fy­ing — and apply­ing — the com­pli­ance require­ments and per­mits nec­es­sary to trans­port and dis­pose of waste. Next, enter­pris­es must char­ac­ter­ize their waste accord­ing to spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion. For exam­ple, the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) has long lists of codes used to char­ac­ter­ize whether waste is haz­ardous or not. The solu­tion is specif­i­cal­ly designed to help cus­tomers char­ac­ter­ize waste and track it as spec­i­fied by nec­es­sary per­mits, Patel said. 

SAP S/4HANA EHS Envi­ron­ment Man­age­men­t’s waste man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties also helps orga­ni­za­tions plan the ship­ment of waste for stor­age or dis­pos­al. In cer­tain coun­tries, such as Ger­many, com­pa­nies can only ship and dis­pose of a cer­tain amount of waste per per­mit. The solu­tion gives cus­tomers pin­point accu­ra­cy of the lev­el of waste in its shipments. 

Look­ing For­ward at the SAP Waste Man­age­ment Roadmap

Patel also shared what the SAP prod­uct devel­op­ment team is work­ing on for this next year and beyond, with regard to the SAP S/4HANA EHS Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment waste man­age­ment solu­tion. One of the main parts of the roadmap he shared was planned logis­tics inte­gra­tion into SAP Extend­ed Ware­house Man­age­ment, intend­ed to help orga­ni­za­tions man­age waste as it moves from pro­duc­tion areas into stor­age. That inte­gra­tion is set to go live next year. 

This solu­tion is cur­rent­ly avail­able for SAP S/4HANA on-premis­es and pub­lic cloud instances. You can watch a replay of the webi­nar, includ­ing Patel’s detailed demo, by reg­is­ter­ing here.