As busi­ness­es world­wide seek to embed sus­tain­abil­i­ty in end-to-end oper­a­tions, SAP sim­i­lar­ly aims to deliv­er envi­ron­men­tal, social, and eco­nom­ic impact through its suite of enter­prise products.

In this year’s sec­ond Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Solu­tions Overview web­cast (watch on-demand here), atten­dees will hear from Hitesh Patel, Prod­uct Man­ag­er for SAP S/4HANA Envi­ron­ment, Health, and Safe­ty (EHS) Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment, about the product’s new waste man­age­ment process. 

Open to both ASUG mem­bers and non-mem­bers, the web­cast will allow Patel to dive into the recent­ly rede­vel­oped mod­ule while edu­cat­ing atten­dees around how to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly man­age waste from gen­er­a­tion to dis­pos­al, iden­ti­fy waste min­i­miza­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties across all lev­els of an enter­prise, and ensure com­pli­ance with waste gen­er­a­tor regulations. 

Inside SAP Envi­ron­ment Management

“If you go back 50 – 70 years in U.S. his­to­ry, there have not been many reg­u­la­tions relat­ed to man­ag­ing air emis­sions, water dis­charge from man­u­fac­tur­ing loca­tions, or the waste that you pro­duce,” said Patel. ​“That’s the premise of SAP S/4HANA EHS Envi­ron­ment Management.”

Part of the SAP EHS Solu­tion Port­fo­lio for Sus­tain­able Oper­a­tions (along with Work­place Safe­ty), SAP Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment focus­es on help­ing cus­tomers to man­age process­es relat­ed to air emis­sions, green­house gas man­age­ment, waste­water man­age­ment, com­pli­ance man­age­ment relat­ed to envi­ron­men­tal leg­is­la­tion, and — now — waste man­age­ment. Its over­ar­ch­ing goal is to sup­port inven­to­ries and track out­puts, so as to help orga­ni­za­tions man­age envi­ron­men­tal impact.

With­in SAP Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment, the waste man­age­ment mod­ule helps cus­tomers to man­age what Patel calls a ​“cra­dle-to-grave” process for waste, from gen­er­a­tion to dis­pos­al: ​“Where is the waste gen­er­at­ed? What sort of waste is it? How long is it stored on site? Is it haz­ardous waste or non­haz­ardous waste? Is it trans­port­ed using a reg­u­lar ship­ping man­i­fest, which we can receive a copy of and keep on record for many years?”

In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing sys­tem­at­ic man­age­ment of waste and iden­ti­fy­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for waste min­i­miza­tion, the mod­ule is intend­ed to dri­ve cost allo­ca­tion or reduc­tion, as well as reduc­tion of penal­ties due to non-compliance. 

“Cus­tomers want to be com­pli­ant at all times, which dri­ves the need to adopt a soft­ware so that they have a con­sis­tent, auditable process across all their facil­i­ties, in how they han­dle the gen­er­a­tion, stor­age, char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, trans­porta­tion, and con­fir­ma­tion of dis­pos­al of waste,” Patel said. 

In his web­cast, Patel will talk through ben­e­fits of the waste man­age­ment process, detail its fea­ture func­tions, and lay out how cus­tomers pro­duc­ing haz­ardous and non­haz­ardous waste can track it, ensure com­pli­ance, and iden­ti­fy those reduc­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties. Among those ben­e­fits are 360-degree com­pli­ance, oper­a­tional con­ti­nu­ity, and less waste, with the mod­ule cre­at­ing a more intu­itive dash­board view for big-pic­ture visibility.

Patel will also dis­cuss the waste ana­lyt­ics app with­in the mod­ule and its abil­i­ty to allow cus­tomers to ana­lyze their waste, with future func­tion­al­i­ties also includ­ing the abil­i­ty to pro­duce reg­u­la­to­ry reports such as the U.S.-mandated bian­nu­al haz­ardous waste report. 

A Response to Cus­tomer Demand

Pre­vi­ous­ly, waste man­age­ment had been over­seen through a sep­a­rate appli­ca­tion from SAP ERP Cen­tral Com­po­nent and heav­i­ly used by large chem­i­cals indus­try cus­tomers to track waste through­out their facil­i­ties and ensure com­pli­ance with world­wide leg­is­la­tions. On SAP S/4HANA, the process is now includ­ed as a part of SAP Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment, which also sup­ports air emis­sions man­age­ment cal­cu­la­tions and quan­ti­fy­ing water discharges. 

Patel believes the new and improved mod­ule will make it eas­i­er for com­pa­nies oper­at­ing across mul­ti­ple coun­tries to com­ply with vary­ing leg­isla­tive require­ments by pro­vid­ing a frame­work for track­ing pro­duc­tion of waste, char­ac­ter­iz­ing waste as haz­ardous or non­haz­ardous, orches­trat­ing and financ­ing trans­porta­tion and safe dis­pos­al of waste, and iden­ti­fy­ing waste min­i­miza­tion opportunities.

“Once you have all these areas tracked, you can then look at and eval­u­ate, per plant, what amount of haz­ardous waste you’re pro­duc­ing, what the largest of those streams are, and how you can reduce them,” Patel explained. 

SAP con­sult­ed with a cus­tomer engage­ment ini­tia­tive (CEI) coun­cil through­out devel­op­ing the mod­ule, solic­it­ing input from both long-time and net-new cus­tomers locat­ed in var­i­ous coun­tries and juris­dic­tions to under­stand their needs for waste man­age­ment. The CEI will con­tin­ue to meet quar­ter­ly over the next few years, inform­ing the pro­duc­t’s devel­op­ment until it reach­es a cer­tain lev­el of maturity.

For more, watch the on-demand web­cast for a deep dive into the new waste man­age­ment process of SAP S/4HANA Envi­ron­ment, Health, and Safe­ty (EHS) Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment. This web­cast is free and open to both ASUG mem­bers and non-members.