SAP IMDS Integration

Automobile manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers must comply with globally applicable regulations and directive for end-of-life vehicles (ELV). Certain ingredients may not be used or may only be used in exceptional cases in order to meet recycling and sustainability standards. This directive requires all manufacturers and suppliers within the automotive industry to declare the composition of all assemblies, components and materials used in motor vehicles in order to identify and trace them within the entire supply chain.

These requirements call for highly integrated data processing, as material information and supplier data along the entire supply chain are necessary. IMDS (International Material Data System), a system developed for the exchange of material data using a defined format between suppliers and customers, is already widely used within the automotive industry. DXC Technology is the responsible company for its development as well as its management.

SI PRO is in the fortunate position of being an SAP partner as well as a partner of DXC Technology and therefore the ideal consultancy company to implement an end-to-end software solution for integrating the company's own logistics and compliance data with supplier, customer and regulatory data. In addition, the implementation of IMDS incorporates the company's IMDS activities into established SAP business processes.

SAP product compliance tool uses bill of material, material, supplier master data and other SAP data to build up the compliance data structure. With IMDS implementation own material data sheets (MDSs) can be automatically generated from these compliance product structures and sent via IMDS. The communication channels to customers and suppliers via IMDS are synchronized in order to exchange data from and to IMDS. The received supplier MDSs are automatically assigned to the corresponding supplier part, integrated into the product structure, and checks against relevant regulatory lists and IMDS regulations are triggered. The relevant regulatory lists include ELV, REACH (SVHC, Annex XIV and XVII), RoHS, California Proposition 65, US Conflict Minerals, EU POP and many more. It is also possible to create own customer lists. All materials available in IMDS, own as well as public, can be used in the product structures. Additionally, own materials can be created in SAP and saved in IMDS if wanted. The regulatory lists and IMDS regulations are always kept up to date by automatic updates and a new check of compliance is triggered after changes have been made.

A further part of our software solution is the integration of suppliers and customers without IMDS within the non-automotive sector and also offers the integration of the China business via CAMDS.

The SAP IMDS interface supports the integration of the legally required data points which are used for SCIP notifications. Manual or automatic notifications to ECHA are also provided by us as part of the project.

The figure below shows how the product structure is initially set up in SAP (blue dashed box) and is completed with the data from IMDS (grey background). After completion of the product structure, own MDSs (blue) can be saved in IMDS or sent to customers via IMDS. Other documents, such as certificates of compliance, can be created from the SAP solution. The compliance status (compliant, non-compliant, missing compliance data, ...) and the check result (successful - green, with warning - yellow) are determined or displayed for each object within the product structure. This compliance status can then be integrated into the procurement and sales processes - for example including a note in the sales order if a product is not compliant regarding a certain legal regulation.

• Reduce automotive compliance costs through efficient compliance requirement management, analytics, automated checks, and regular content updates.
• Reduce risk by using up-to-date information and documents - "single source of truth" for company compliance data.
• Increase revenue by optimizing product development and launch with embedded product compliance.
• Establish a fully integrated system for supplier, customer, and regulatory information with your own business objects of your business planning.