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Trends in environmental computer applications
Environmental Software 7 (1992) 175-179
Trends in Environmental Computer Applications Integrating environmental management information systems with business systems Chris FitzGerald Most Environmental Health and Safety (EH & S) automated information systems are isolated from the company's mainstream information systems. This isolation makes the systems more expensive, less efficient, and harder to justify within corporate budgets. This article traces the historical development of environmental management information systems (EMIS) in response to regulatory reporting requirements, characterizes three major classes of EMIS, and identifies factors which have kept EMIS isolated from more traditional corporate information systems. There are now more than 500 commercial and public environmental software systems available I and probably at least that many one-of-a-kind applications developed within corporations and public agencies. The proliferation of these applications reflects both the urgent need of environmental professionals for automated tools and the lack of standards available to meet this need. While these thousand-plus software applications have undoubtedly saved tens of thousands of hours of professional and staff time in environmental report preparation, a number of common problems have kept them from realizing their full potential.
items several times, which makes data capture even more expensive. If a chemical is defined in different files for air emissions, underground tank management, inventories, waste management, and ground water monitoring the user or users of the system are forced to re-key or load the chemical descriptions at least five times. These data are also unavailable for integration to produce Form R reports or for meaningful linking with the company's purchasing, distribution, inventory management, and applications which could offer valuable data streams to the environmental applications. MISunderstandings. In many companies the MIS (Management of Information Systems) and environmental professionals have a hard time communicating since there are few individuals who have experience or training in both disciplines. While the environmental professional may understand that his/her profession's information requirements are Complex, Dynamic, and Multi-Faceted, the MIS professional may tend to see them as Undisciplined, Volatile, and Disorganized. Often environmental automation projects bog down at the Requirements Definition stage, usually because the two professions can't find a common vocabulary. These problems are rooted in the historical development of environmental information requirements and corporate information management function. While for the last two decades the two fields have evolved in divergent paths, there are now some signs that progress is being made towards developing a common language.
Common Problems with Environmental Software Islands of Automation. In most companies even the most successful environmental software solutions are isolated from other automated systems. Applications for processes such as air monitoring, water sampling, waste management, and hazardous material inventories often operate under different programs and on different platforms. This forces users to learn a variety of different approaches to data management and prevents data sharing between environmental and other line applications. Data Capture for most applications is inefficient, expensive, and potentially inaccurate because of the reliance on data entry from hard copy (.printed) sources. The cost of key-entering Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) and inventory data at start-up time has often led companies to abandon full implementation of an application that has been purchased or developed. Lack of internal integration within individual software applications means that users must re-define and re-enter chemicals, work locations, and other data
History of FAllS Environmental management information systems were originally developed in response to the proliferation of data reports mandated by government regulations. The number of regulations was relatively modest in 1970 when the Clean Air Act was passed, but it has grown exponentially at the federal, state, regional, and local level since then, requiring much more complex information management processes. (See Figure 1). By the late 1970s the regulatory emphasis had shifted from protection of the natural environment to the protection of workers exposed to hazardous materials, and then to the protection of the general community. The concerns raised by dramatic toxic catastrophes 175
© 1993 Chris FitzGerald
C. FitzGerald
176
such as Love Canal and Bhopal were reflected in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA 1976), the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA 1976), the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA 1980), and the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA 1983). The volume of data required for recordkeeping and reporting increased with the requirements for ground-water monitoring, exposure tracking, labeling, Potentially Responsible Party (PRP) searches, and MSDSs. However, industry's response still tended to be reactive rather than proactive. 2 By the late 1980s state and regional agencies were adding even more stringent rules than federal agencies, and the enactment of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA 1986) confirmed that full public disclosure was going to be required on the life cycle of hazardous materials. The most sophisticated firms began to shift from minimal compliance to strategic understanding of the impact of environmental regulations) What will be the driving forces in the 1990s? One trend underway is the introduction of requirements to track environmental and health impacts through the entire life cycle of a hazardous substance, tracking emissions to all media (air, water, soil, etc.) rather than simply measuring "the end of the pipe" for each media. Regulations such as SARA 313 (Form R) have not replaced traditional single media requirements. Indeed, the methodologies for various reporting procedures are inconsistent andcontradictory, adding to the volume of data to be managed. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 point to another trend: economic management of environmental impacts. The economic incentives/disincentives approach together with the "cradle to grave" requirements of Form R and its successors will require companies to Figure 1 Evolution of Regulatory Mandates and Corporate Response
Time Frame
Protection Emphasis
early 1970s late 1970s
Air & Rivers
Emphasisof Requirements
Source Monitoring Employees Recordkeeping & Reporting
Corporate Stance Resistance
Reactive, Minimal Compliance 1980s Community HAZMAT & Strategic Hazardous Waste Compliance, Accountability & Minimize Risk & Disclosure Liability 1990s Workers, Multi-Media Accounting Community, Total Emissions Pro -Active Environment Reduction Image-Aware Opportunities for Savings
adopt an accounting perspective to hazardous materials and wastes, tracking them on a material and cost balance impacts basis rather than the "exception" basis which characterizes traditional emission reporting. For the most proactive firms, these trends will require the integration of environmental information management with mainstream data management. Evolution of EMIS The evolution of environmental management information systems has reflected trends in both regulations and in corporate information management. Prior to 1980 environmental data systems were usually implemented on corporate mainframes or large minicomputers, since those were the only resources available. In the early 1980s, the proliferation of personal computers and the increased complexity of reporting requirements began to take control away from the corporate information management establishment. MIS departments simply couldn't keep up with the flood of new data management requirements, and impatient environmental managers began to develop their own solutions or buy low-cost commercial packages. While the emergence of PC programs did assist in report preparation at the local level, the decentralization of databases meant that each user had to develop his or her own database and learn how to use a variety of dedicated software packages. The availability of local area networks (LANs) and inexpensive UNIX workstations in the late 1980s made it possible for plantlevel work groups to integrate their environmental databases, but because they were usually implemented from the bottom up, corporate-level data systems such as Personnel and Distribution remained unavailable for most EMIS. An EMIS Hierarchy Three types of environmental management information systems have emerged from these regulatory, corporate, and technological trends. Most existing environmental management information systems can be classified in a hierarchy based on the degree of integration and strategic orientation (see Figure 2). A lower position on the hierarchy does not indicate less significance to the function, but rather that availability of the function is a prerequisite for the next level function. Source Monitoring is the broadest-based, oldest, and probably best understood type of environmental management information system. The data volumes involved in source monitoring are very large, but the data does not generally require integration from one application to another. Materials Management is emerging as the most demanding and costly field in environmental information management. Waste management requirements originally mandated by RCRA and the inventory accounting requirements originating with SARA have been amended
Trends in Environmental Computer Appfications and supplemented by state and regional requirements which created the need for "cradle to grave" tracking of hazardous materials, wastes, and waste containers. Originally these data procedures had the character of exception reporting, in which the storing or disposal of hazardous materials was estimated for listed substances and only exceptions to these figures required reporting. Now they are beginning to resemble financial accounting, as each hazardous material's life cycle on a property must be recorded as purchases, shipments, inventory, transfers, transformations, manifests, and releases to the air, water, ground water, and other media. Compliance~Risk Management is the most critical and least automated function in this hierarchy. At this level the responsible environmental professional must assure that he/she knows what the environmental responsibilities are and monitor that these responsibilities are being met. The automated tools available to the environmental manager to support this function are limited to audit management applications, regulatory searching systems, and variations on the environmental events and calendar/tickler concepts. An ideal application in this area would help scan regulatory, company, and professional practice standards, weigh them for relative priority, and then scan source monitoring, and materials management databases for compliance against programs and standards. The ideal system would not present all relevant data, but report by summary, exception, and trends against pre-defined queries. None of these data will have any validity, however, if the underlying databases are not consistent, accurate, and up to date. Unless corporations want to install comprehensive, real-time transactional applications exclusively for environmental health and safety, the only hope for realizing these data systems is by tapping into existing "enterprise" data systems and by mainstreaming the environmental information function within a company.
177
Eaterwise laformatim Systems While there are varying definitions of enterprise systems, the basic characteristic is that an enterprise application reflects and supports a standard way of managing a specific function across the enterprise. The enterprise may be a plant, division, or corporation as a whole. These applications must by definition share common data definitions, access, and query routines, and application definition, development, and implementation procedures. The first functions automated in corporations were usually Administration and Finance, including general ledger, payroll, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and personnel. The second generation of mainframe enterprise applications included Purchasing, Inventory Management, Distribution, and various human resources functions. Today a new generation of enterprise applications are emerging to support the demands of international economic competition. These include automated process management, Just in Time (JIT) inventory support, engineering design (CAD/CAM), and materials resource planning (MRP). IBM's Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) strategy is one model of integrating these functions within an enterprise system. IBM's CIM model defines six major functional areas within the manufacturing enterprise: marketing, engineering and research, production planning, plant operations, physical distribution, and business management.4 These applications share a common data store, communications system, and "repository," which is IBM's term for a shared library of data definitions, data relationships, and application and user views of the data. All information functions are mapped at the planning stage of implementing the CIM model and redundant definitions reconciled to assure that there are no conflicting descriptions of a data entity. Instead of each application requiring its own database, communications, and access and presentation
Figure 2 A Hierarchy of EMIS Functions Application Focus
Orientation
Typical Uses
Data Characteristics
Compliance/Risk Management
Policy & Programs Internal Compliance
Auditing, Permit Management
Materials Management
Plant Level Processes
Source Monitoring
Engineering Task
Chemical Inventory, Waste Tracking, Material & Emissions Balances Air & Water Reporting, Tank Testing, Exposure Monitoring, Ground Water & Soils
Highest Integration, Sunmam3, & Exception, Relatively Lower Volume High Integration, High Volume
Low Integration, High Volume
C FitzGerald
178
Figure 3 Applying Enterprise Data to Environmental Health & Safety Enterprise Application Customer Order Servicing Research Engineering Management Procurement Material Planning & Resource Planning Material Receiving Storage Production Process Material Transfer Product Shipping Plant Maintenance Plant Site Services Physical Distribution Operations Financial Planning & Operations Accounts Payable Cost Accounting Payroll tools, these services are maintained at the enterprise level and available to all applications. The price of these advantages is the discipline to plan, implement, and maintain the comprehensive enterprise system. The potential benefits of a CIM or other enterprise solution for the environmental professionals are obvious. In virtually all of the enterprise applications there are data transactions and files which are needed for environmental and health and safety management and reporting. (See Figure 3 for examples from the CIM model.)
The Challenge: Mainstreaming EMIS Solutions It is clear that there is a lot of potential value in bringing EMIS into the mainstream of the plant, division, or corporate level enterprise information system. But how do we get there? The early 1990s are a time of tremendous change in the information systems world. However, most of the changes are beneficial to the end user or information customer. Changes in the corporate information management function together with the emergence of low-cost, highperformance workstations accompanied by rich application sets will support efforts by environmental professionals to get access to valuable data streams. It is a buyer's market for information users. The most significant remaining obstacle is the lack of a consistent set of data definitions. The inconsistency in data definitions arises from the patchwork history of regulations development by federal, state, and regional bodies and is unlikely to be resolved by regulators. Working Towards EDI Standards Industry groups have made significant efforts to create information standards, such as the Chemical Manufacturers Association's (CMA) standard for paper MSDS, a draft of which is now under review by CMA
Environmental Health & Safety Utility MSDS Outbound Source reduction/waste minimization Source reduction/waste minimization Source reduction/waste minimization Source reduction/waste minimization Inbound MSDS, Chemical inventory Chemical inventory, waste tracking Create outbound MSDS SARA 313 transfers Outbound MSDS EH&S management and training EH&S management and training SARA 313 and RCRA Tracking Strategic planning (i.e CAA 1990) Waste taxes Incorporated environmental costs Personnel data for OSHA reporting member companies. But perhaps the best opportunity for creating standard data definitions and transaction sets is the American National Standards Institute's (ANSI) standards for electronic data interchange (EDI). The ANSI EDI standards are the product of its XI2 committee, which has been developing standards for dozens of EDI business transactions. Businesses using EDI for inter-business transactions are saving money and gaining a competitive advantage by bypassing paper and allowing their different business information systems to communicate through this common language: "EDI is already heavily used in industries such as automotive, chemical and retail. Companies in these industries which are not using EDI risk putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage. EDI helps reduce errors by eliminating re-entry of data. Time cycles are also greatly reduced Whereas by post it may take 3 or 4 days for information to reach a supplier, with EDI it only takes a few minutes. Man), companies also claim that use of EDI reduces the cost of processing an order by up to 75%. ,,5 In July 1990, the EPA adopted a policy to use XI2 standards for environmental data transactions and accept (but not require) electronic submissions of reports that followed EDI standards. The X12 standards for MSDS (Transaction Set #848) are now adopted and in use; and other environmental transactions are now being developed or reviewed. EMIS developers can take advantage of the X12 standards in a variety of ways. At the most active level your company can participate in developing the standards by participating in the pilot tests, by attending X12 subcommittee meetings, and/or commenting in writing on the draft standards. Your company may
Trends in Environmental Computer Applications already be active in ANSI XI2 activities directly or through industry groups such as CMA or American Petroleum Institute (API) or the Environment and Safety Data Exchange (ESDX), a non-profit association of environmental software users and vendors formed to promulgate use of the standards. Even without active participation in the committee activities, you can take advantage of the standards by using them in developing and/or selecting your own EMIS applications. Apart from the already adopted standards, the ANSI X12 Data Element Dictionary provides the common data elements from which all ANSI EDI transaction sets are built. Any of these options can help you progress in moving your EMIS applications into the enterprise data mainstream by providing a common language in which you can work with your company's information professionals.
Chris FitzGerald is editor of Total Qualio; Environmental Management magazine and consults on
179
the selection, development, and implementation of environmental software as an associate of the Skylonda Group. He is writing a book on Environmental Mimagement Information Systems ( EMIS ) and welcomes comments and case studies. Contact him at EMIS, 708 Arimo Avenue, Oakland, CA 94610, (510) 444-4059. Endnotes
1. Donley, Elizabeth M., "'Trends in Environmental Software" in Environmental Software Report, v.III, No. 1, October/November 1990. 2. Friedman, Frank B., Practical Guide to Environmental Management. Washington, D.C.: The Environmental Law Institute 1991, p. 10. 3. Friedman, Ibid, p. 11. 4. IBM Corporation, The CIM Enterprise. White Plains, NY: International Business Machines, U.S. Marketing and Services 1989. 5. Stark, John, Competitive Manufacturing Through Information Technology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990, pp. 129-130.
Trends in Environmental Computer Applications Integrating environmental management information systems with business systems Chris FitzGerald Most Environmental Health and Safety (EH & S) automated information systems are isolated from the company's mainstream information systems. This isolation makes the systems more expensive, less efficient, and harder to justify within corporate budgets. This article traces the historical development of environmental management information systems (EMIS) in response to regulatory reporting requirements, characterizes three major classes of EMIS, and identifies factors which have kept EMIS isolated from more traditional corporate information systems. There are now more than 500 commercial and public environmental software systems available I and probably at least that many one-of-a-kind applications developed within corporations and public agencies. The proliferation of these applications reflects both the urgent need of environmental professionals for automated tools and the lack of standards available to meet this need. While these thousand-plus software applications have undoubtedly saved tens of thousands of hours of professional and staff time in environmental report preparation, a number of common problems have kept them from realizing their full potential.
items several times, which makes data capture even more expensive. If a chemical is defined in different files for air emissions, underground tank management, inventories, waste management, and ground water monitoring the user or users of the system are forced to re-key or load the chemical descriptions at least five times. These data are also unavailable for integration to produce Form R reports or for meaningful linking with the company's purchasing, distribution, inventory management, and applications which could offer valuable data streams to the environmental applications. MISunderstandings. In many companies the MIS (Management of Information Systems) and environmental professionals have a hard time communicating since there are few individuals who have experience or training in both disciplines. While the environmental professional may understand that his/her profession's information requirements are Complex, Dynamic, and Multi-Faceted, the MIS professional may tend to see them as Undisciplined, Volatile, and Disorganized. Often environmental automation projects bog down at the Requirements Definition stage, usually because the two professions can't find a common vocabulary. These problems are rooted in the historical development of environmental information requirements and corporate information management function. While for the last two decades the two fields have evolved in divergent paths, there are now some signs that progress is being made towards developing a common language.
Common Problems with Environmental Software Islands of Automation. In most companies even the most successful environmental software solutions are isolated from other automated systems. Applications for processes such as air monitoring, water sampling, waste management, and hazardous material inventories often operate under different programs and on different platforms. This forces users to learn a variety of different approaches to data management and prevents data sharing between environmental and other line applications. Data Capture for most applications is inefficient, expensive, and potentially inaccurate because of the reliance on data entry from hard copy (.printed) sources. The cost of key-entering Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) and inventory data at start-up time has often led companies to abandon full implementation of an application that has been purchased or developed. Lack of internal integration within individual software applications means that users must re-define and re-enter chemicals, work locations, and other data
History of FAllS Environmental management information systems were originally developed in response to the proliferation of data reports mandated by government regulations. The number of regulations was relatively modest in 1970 when the Clean Air Act was passed, but it has grown exponentially at the federal, state, regional, and local level since then, requiring much more complex information management processes. (See Figure 1). By the late 1970s the regulatory emphasis had shifted from protection of the natural environment to the protection of workers exposed to hazardous materials, and then to the protection of the general community. The concerns raised by dramatic toxic catastrophes 175
© 1993 Chris FitzGerald
C. FitzGerald
176
such as Love Canal and Bhopal were reflected in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA 1976), the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA 1976), the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA 1980), and the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA 1983). The volume of data required for recordkeeping and reporting increased with the requirements for ground-water monitoring, exposure tracking, labeling, Potentially Responsible Party (PRP) searches, and MSDSs. However, industry's response still tended to be reactive rather than proactive. 2 By the late 1980s state and regional agencies were adding even more stringent rules than federal agencies, and the enactment of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA 1986) confirmed that full public disclosure was going to be required on the life cycle of hazardous materials. The most sophisticated firms began to shift from minimal compliance to strategic understanding of the impact of environmental regulations) What will be the driving forces in the 1990s? One trend underway is the introduction of requirements to track environmental and health impacts through the entire life cycle of a hazardous substance, tracking emissions to all media (air, water, soil, etc.) rather than simply measuring "the end of the pipe" for each media. Regulations such as SARA 313 (Form R) have not replaced traditional single media requirements. Indeed, the methodologies for various reporting procedures are inconsistent andcontradictory, adding to the volume of data to be managed. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 point to another trend: economic management of environmental impacts. The economic incentives/disincentives approach together with the "cradle to grave" requirements of Form R and its successors will require companies to Figure 1 Evolution of Regulatory Mandates and Corporate Response
Time Frame
Protection Emphasis
early 1970s late 1970s
Air & Rivers
Emphasisof Requirements
Source Monitoring Employees Recordkeeping & Reporting
Corporate Stance Resistance
Reactive, Minimal Compliance 1980s Community HAZMAT & Strategic Hazardous Waste Compliance, Accountability & Minimize Risk & Disclosure Liability 1990s Workers, Multi-Media Accounting Community, Total Emissions Pro -Active Environment Reduction Image-Aware Opportunities for Savings
adopt an accounting perspective to hazardous materials and wastes, tracking them on a material and cost balance impacts basis rather than the "exception" basis which characterizes traditional emission reporting. For the most proactive firms, these trends will require the integration of environmental information management with mainstream data management. Evolution of EMIS The evolution of environmental management information systems has reflected trends in both regulations and in corporate information management. Prior to 1980 environmental data systems were usually implemented on corporate mainframes or large minicomputers, since those were the only resources available. In the early 1980s, the proliferation of personal computers and the increased complexity of reporting requirements began to take control away from the corporate information management establishment. MIS departments simply couldn't keep up with the flood of new data management requirements, and impatient environmental managers began to develop their own solutions or buy low-cost commercial packages. While the emergence of PC programs did assist in report preparation at the local level, the decentralization of databases meant that each user had to develop his or her own database and learn how to use a variety of dedicated software packages. The availability of local area networks (LANs) and inexpensive UNIX workstations in the late 1980s made it possible for plantlevel work groups to integrate their environmental databases, but because they were usually implemented from the bottom up, corporate-level data systems such as Personnel and Distribution remained unavailable for most EMIS. An EMIS Hierarchy Three types of environmental management information systems have emerged from these regulatory, corporate, and technological trends. Most existing environmental management information systems can be classified in a hierarchy based on the degree of integration and strategic orientation (see Figure 2). A lower position on the hierarchy does not indicate less significance to the function, but rather that availability of the function is a prerequisite for the next level function. Source Monitoring is the broadest-based, oldest, and probably best understood type of environmental management information system. The data volumes involved in source monitoring are very large, but the data does not generally require integration from one application to another. Materials Management is emerging as the most demanding and costly field in environmental information management. Waste management requirements originally mandated by RCRA and the inventory accounting requirements originating with SARA have been amended
Trends in Environmental Computer Appfications and supplemented by state and regional requirements which created the need for "cradle to grave" tracking of hazardous materials, wastes, and waste containers. Originally these data procedures had the character of exception reporting, in which the storing or disposal of hazardous materials was estimated for listed substances and only exceptions to these figures required reporting. Now they are beginning to resemble financial accounting, as each hazardous material's life cycle on a property must be recorded as purchases, shipments, inventory, transfers, transformations, manifests, and releases to the air, water, ground water, and other media. Compliance~Risk Management is the most critical and least automated function in this hierarchy. At this level the responsible environmental professional must assure that he/she knows what the environmental responsibilities are and monitor that these responsibilities are being met. The automated tools available to the environmental manager to support this function are limited to audit management applications, regulatory searching systems, and variations on the environmental events and calendar/tickler concepts. An ideal application in this area would help scan regulatory, company, and professional practice standards, weigh them for relative priority, and then scan source monitoring, and materials management databases for compliance against programs and standards. The ideal system would not present all relevant data, but report by summary, exception, and trends against pre-defined queries. None of these data will have any validity, however, if the underlying databases are not consistent, accurate, and up to date. Unless corporations want to install comprehensive, real-time transactional applications exclusively for environmental health and safety, the only hope for realizing these data systems is by tapping into existing "enterprise" data systems and by mainstreaming the environmental information function within a company.
177
Eaterwise laformatim Systems While there are varying definitions of enterprise systems, the basic characteristic is that an enterprise application reflects and supports a standard way of managing a specific function across the enterprise. The enterprise may be a plant, division, or corporation as a whole. These applications must by definition share common data definitions, access, and query routines, and application definition, development, and implementation procedures. The first functions automated in corporations were usually Administration and Finance, including general ledger, payroll, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and personnel. The second generation of mainframe enterprise applications included Purchasing, Inventory Management, Distribution, and various human resources functions. Today a new generation of enterprise applications are emerging to support the demands of international economic competition. These include automated process management, Just in Time (JIT) inventory support, engineering design (CAD/CAM), and materials resource planning (MRP). IBM's Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) strategy is one model of integrating these functions within an enterprise system. IBM's CIM model defines six major functional areas within the manufacturing enterprise: marketing, engineering and research, production planning, plant operations, physical distribution, and business management.4 These applications share a common data store, communications system, and "repository," which is IBM's term for a shared library of data definitions, data relationships, and application and user views of the data. All information functions are mapped at the planning stage of implementing the CIM model and redundant definitions reconciled to assure that there are no conflicting descriptions of a data entity. Instead of each application requiring its own database, communications, and access and presentation
Figure 2 A Hierarchy of EMIS Functions Application Focus
Orientation
Typical Uses
Data Characteristics
Compliance/Risk Management
Policy & Programs Internal Compliance
Auditing, Permit Management
Materials Management
Plant Level Processes
Source Monitoring
Engineering Task
Chemical Inventory, Waste Tracking, Material & Emissions Balances Air & Water Reporting, Tank Testing, Exposure Monitoring, Ground Water & Soils
Highest Integration, Sunmam3, & Exception, Relatively Lower Volume High Integration, High Volume
Low Integration, High Volume
C FitzGerald
178
Figure 3 Applying Enterprise Data to Environmental Health & Safety Enterprise Application Customer Order Servicing Research Engineering Management Procurement Material Planning & Resource Planning Material Receiving Storage Production Process Material Transfer Product Shipping Plant Maintenance Plant Site Services Physical Distribution Operations Financial Planning & Operations Accounts Payable Cost Accounting Payroll tools, these services are maintained at the enterprise level and available to all applications. The price of these advantages is the discipline to plan, implement, and maintain the comprehensive enterprise system. The potential benefits of a CIM or other enterprise solution for the environmental professionals are obvious. In virtually all of the enterprise applications there are data transactions and files which are needed for environmental and health and safety management and reporting. (See Figure 3 for examples from the CIM model.)
The Challenge: Mainstreaming EMIS Solutions It is clear that there is a lot of potential value in bringing EMIS into the mainstream of the plant, division, or corporate level enterprise information system. But how do we get there? The early 1990s are a time of tremendous change in the information systems world. However, most of the changes are beneficial to the end user or information customer. Changes in the corporate information management function together with the emergence of low-cost, highperformance workstations accompanied by rich application sets will support efforts by environmental professionals to get access to valuable data streams. It is a buyer's market for information users. The most significant remaining obstacle is the lack of a consistent set of data definitions. The inconsistency in data definitions arises from the patchwork history of regulations development by federal, state, and regional bodies and is unlikely to be resolved by regulators. Working Towards EDI Standards Industry groups have made significant efforts to create information standards, such as the Chemical Manufacturers Association's (CMA) standard for paper MSDS, a draft of which is now under review by CMA
Environmental Health & Safety Utility MSDS Outbound Source reduction/waste minimization Source reduction/waste minimization Source reduction/waste minimization Source reduction/waste minimization Inbound MSDS, Chemical inventory Chemical inventory, waste tracking Create outbound MSDS SARA 313 transfers Outbound MSDS EH&S management and training EH&S management and training SARA 313 and RCRA Tracking Strategic planning (i.e CAA 1990) Waste taxes Incorporated environmental costs Personnel data for OSHA reporting member companies. But perhaps the best opportunity for creating standard data definitions and transaction sets is the American National Standards Institute's (ANSI) standards for electronic data interchange (EDI). The ANSI EDI standards are the product of its XI2 committee, which has been developing standards for dozens of EDI business transactions. Businesses using EDI for inter-business transactions are saving money and gaining a competitive advantage by bypassing paper and allowing their different business information systems to communicate through this common language: "EDI is already heavily used in industries such as automotive, chemical and retail. Companies in these industries which are not using EDI risk putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage. EDI helps reduce errors by eliminating re-entry of data. Time cycles are also greatly reduced Whereas by post it may take 3 or 4 days for information to reach a supplier, with EDI it only takes a few minutes. Man), companies also claim that use of EDI reduces the cost of processing an order by up to 75%. ,,5 In July 1990, the EPA adopted a policy to use XI2 standards for environmental data transactions and accept (but not require) electronic submissions of reports that followed EDI standards. The X12 standards for MSDS (Transaction Set #848) are now adopted and in use; and other environmental transactions are now being developed or reviewed. EMIS developers can take advantage of the X12 standards in a variety of ways. At the most active level your company can participate in developing the standards by participating in the pilot tests, by attending X12 subcommittee meetings, and/or commenting in writing on the draft standards. Your company may
Trends in Environmental Computer Applications already be active in ANSI XI2 activities directly or through industry groups such as CMA or American Petroleum Institute (API) or the Environment and Safety Data Exchange (ESDX), a non-profit association of environmental software users and vendors formed to promulgate use of the standards. Even without active participation in the committee activities, you can take advantage of the standards by using them in developing and/or selecting your own EMIS applications. Apart from the already adopted standards, the ANSI X12 Data Element Dictionary provides the common data elements from which all ANSI EDI transaction sets are built. Any of these options can help you progress in moving your EMIS applications into the enterprise data mainstream by providing a common language in which you can work with your company's information professionals.
Chris FitzGerald is editor of Total Qualio; Environmental Management magazine and consults on
179
the selection, development, and implementation of environmental software as an associate of the Skylonda Group. He is writing a book on Environmental Mimagement Information Systems ( EMIS ) and welcomes comments and case studies. Contact him at EMIS, 708 Arimo Avenue, Oakland, CA 94610, (510) 444-4059. Endnotes
1. Donley, Elizabeth M., "'Trends in Environmental Software" in Environmental Software Report, v.III, No. 1, October/November 1990. 2. Friedman, Frank B., Practical Guide to Environmental Management. Washington, D.C.: The Environmental Law Institute 1991, p. 10. 3. Friedman, Ibid, p. 11. 4. IBM Corporation, The CIM Enterprise. White Plains, NY: International Business Machines, U.S. Marketing and Services 1989. 5. Stark, John, Competitive Manufacturing Through Information Technology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990, pp. 129-130.