CHEMICAL MANUFACTURERS today face increasing and competing demands for compliance.They simultaneously must contend with mandates from regulatory bodies at the national,state and local levels as well as standards and guidelines from industry organizations and international bodies.These dictates span a broad range,including safety,environmental protection,quality and security.They impose a variety of types of obligations-prescriptive,management-based,performance-based,duty and liability,etc.In addition,actions must satisfy corporate edicts,e.g.,for productivity,cost reduction and alignment with strategic initiatives.To meet all these obligations,chemical makers are resorting to multiple programs and systems,which,in turn,incur a significant burden.A conservative estimate of the cost of compliance is 10% of a worker's time and salary just dealing with regulations.In high-risk sectors,this easily can reach 20%-30% to support dozens of necessary programs.It's easy to imagine that if the present course continues compliance will require one person to check the work for every person actually doing the work.
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