Foresight Management reduces SDS processing time by 80% using Sysrev.

Foresight Management, creators of the EHS, energy and sustainability software: Foundation, offers a suite of Product Stewardship tools and services to manufacturers in a variety of industries, including the management of Safety Data Sheets (SDSs). Per OSHA regulations, manufacturers must be able to retrieve and make available SDSs for every chemical and product within their manufacturing and/or logistical supply chains. More than simply satisfying the requirement, Foundation SDS Management further enables manufacturers to make data driven decisions based on the most up-to-date information.

Every SDS management project begins with an holistic SDS review. If reviewing the SDSs are Step 1, then Step 0 is aggregating the documents. For each new client, Foresight Management obtains and reviews an SDS(s) for every chemical, product, or item within the client's manufacturing line and supply chain. Depending on the client/project, the total number of documents ranges from hundreds to thousands.

While SDSs are fairly standard in their overall structure (e.g. GHS Hazards in Section 2), the individual pieces of data/components can vary just like any other document. Some may use the unit '%-volume' where others state 'ppm'. In order to provide the services they do, Foresight Management employees review every SDS and extract important data. This data is then entered into Foresight Managements internal database in a standardized format. The database itself is queried by Foresight Management's clients via the Foundation software.

Previously, the SDS review and data extraction was performed entirely by humans and the average review time was 10 minutes per SDS. At that rate, a 1000 SDS project would require 167 hours (one-person-month) to complete. 

Within the past year, Foresight Management switched from a human-based review to a hybrid-review, combining AI vis-a-vis Sysrev's Auto-Labeler, and human verification. In this modern paradigm, Sysrev's Auto-Labeler processes each SDS and automatically extracts the desired data field. Then a human reviewer verifies the information was extracted correctly and/or makes any necessary adjustments. According to Foresight Management, review time has decreased by 80% to just 2 minutes per SDS (less than one-person-week per 1000 documents)

As Foresight Management employees spend less time on document review and data extraction, they have more time to spend on more complex and analytical work. Moreover, Foresight Management is able to increase their project velocity and throughput, driving additional business.