Comply with environmental requirements with IHS Essential Gateway for Process Data

Pre-built interoperability solution enables streamlined environmental health and safety compliance and greenhouse gas sustainability reporting without costly custom development, IHS says.

December 10, 2009

IHS Introduces Essential Gateway for Process Data.

IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), a source of critical information and insight, introduced IHS Essential Gateway for Process Data, an interoperability solution that helps companies streamline their environmental health and safety (EHS) compliance and greenhouse gas (GHG) sustainability reporting by providing seamless data interoperability among numerous enterprise software platforms and IHS Essential Suite.

Essential Gateway for Process Data automatically acquires mapped data, applies user-defined validation rules, and allows for viewing and approval before importing data into Essential Suite, where it joins the enterprise master data set for EHS compliance or sustainability management.

Federal and international regulatory compliance requirements and sustainability reporting protocols require companies to collect information from enterprise process systems. Many companies use manual processes to transfer data from enterprise systems to spreadsheets, and then upload the data to an environmental management information system, IHS said. Some organizations automate the process by implementing costly custom-built applications. Essential Gateway for Process Data is a pre-built solution that lets companies link their enterprise process systems to Essential Suite without requiring difficult and expensive custom development work.

"Essential Gateway for Process Data delivers out-of-the-box functionality that saves time and reduces costs associated with environmental health and safety compliance and greenhouse gas sustainability reporting," said Scott Lockhart, IHS vice president, environment.

System interoperability enables customers to efficiently and cost-effectively address some of their most challenging problems associated with data collection, data quality, and data availability. Essential Gateway for Process Data helps companies gather data at frequent intervals in order to manage against key performance indicators and drive more real-time decision making. It collects EHS-related data from a variety of data sources, including process data historians, Continuous Emissions Monitoring Systems, Laboratory Information Management Systems, Distributed Control Systems, and Product Lifecycle systems. The application is particularly useful for organizations that need to collect and aggregate a broad spectrum of EHS-related data for carbon/greenhouse gas emission reporting, from specific pollutants (including CO2, SO2, NOx) to operating parameters (such as heat inputs, flow rates and production feeds). It can transfer data between systems at a single location or across multiple facilities.

Essential Gateway for Process Data is one of two new IHS interoperability solutions that are currently available to the market. IHS Essential Gateway for Work Orders supports closed-loop management of compliance, and EHS operational excellence objectives by integrating with enterprise asset management and computerized maintenance management systems, the company said.

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– Edited by Mark T. Hoske, online products editor, Manufacturing Business Technology, MBT www.mbtmag.com