As I mentioned in a recent blog on Material Safety Data Sheets, you can now assign chemicals to certain locations in your organization.  I forgot to mention that we've also added space to record key information of the product.  This is a great place to keep information like supplier names and contact information, order quantities, container sizes, storage shelves it can be found on, etc. 



If there are any other fields you feel we should add to the MSDS Details, please drop us a note (support@safetysync.com).  We'll add it to the development queue!

For the most part, our customers have only had a handful of Material Safety Data Sheets.  For this reason, we've always automatically displayed every company MSDS in the Employee Portal.  We have a number of larger customers that have exhaustive lists, often with two products that are very similar.


With this in mind, we've added search functionality which allows the user to limit the list to only certain MSDS sheets.  By default, you'll notice the employee's assigned location is listed by default (why search MSDS's that are not at your location?).  The search box provides the user the ability to filter by product name (or portion of it), location and by status (current or expired).

Remember, administrators should be diligent in reviewing MSDS's and removing any products (from the list and your storage) that no longer have current sheets.  This will prevent accidents, non-compliance in the event of an inspection, and overall employee confusion.

The simpler you make it to find MSDS sheets, the more likely your employees are to read them!

Printed material has been the most efficient means of storing and sharing documents since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440.  Paper documents became even more pervasive when as computer companies like Hewlett Packard made printers affordable enough to be available in every office.

I saw an article recently about Kindle, Amazon.com's electronic book.  Newsweek calls it "the iPod of reading".  It can download any book from a catalog of 240,000 titles in just 60 seconds.  And it can store 1,500 books!  Amazon has already sold over 500,000 of the electronic books, and they can't keep up with demand.  This trend has enough momentum that I think kids growing up 30 years from now will have to go to a museum to see a printed book.

Paper is still ingrained in our business culture though, and safety departments are one of the heaviest users.  I've seen companies that have an administrator in the safety department dedicated to printing, binding and distributing paper full time.  Just think how much paper is generated for policy manuals, procedure binders, Material Safety Data Sheets and the dozens of types of safety forms.

It's hard to imagine now, but I see paper use steadily falling over the next few decades, as more and more companies realize that storing documents online is more reliable, secure and cost effective than paper.  This transition will happen sooner in organizations with dispersed workforces; nearly all workers now have (or will soon have) access in the field to a computer (or similar device) and the Internet.  With the right software (ie. an online Safety Management System like SAFETYSYNC), a company will have all it needs to make the move to electronic documents.  Solutions that offer the ability to print and sign a document will be the ones that are adopted first, since this practice is still important for due diligence purposes.

Our Form and Recordkeeping components are going to be released soon in Beta for testing.  If you're interested in moving some or all of your forms online, give us a call!

WHMIS regulations are clear; employers need to have a Material Safety Data Sheet on site for each controlled product in their workplace.  This requirement certainly makes sense, but keeping the MSDSs current can be a pain for safety administrators.  Health Canada and the provincial OH&S regulators added specific language to the WHMIS regulations that opens the door for computerized Material Safety Data Sheets to help deal with MSDS hassles.

There have been CD, DVD and online systems available for managing MSDSs for some time, but they're usually overly complicated and expensive.  For example, CCOHS has an MSDS tool (http://www.ccohs.ca/products/msds/) available on DVD and the web that allows users to search over 320,000 MSDSs.  That's great, but most companies I've been involved with only need about 20!  CCOHS's tool is pricey too at $1,800 for unlimited users.

We've developed a tool that is simple, but that we feel will satisfy most companies' requirements.  Specifically, you upload only the MSDSs that apply to your operations.  SafetySync does not maintain a huge inventory of MSDSs; there's no point.  The internet has pretty much any MSDS you could want.  If you can't find your MSDS with a Google search, you could try www.MSDS.com (a free search tool with over 3.5 Million MSDSs!)  For the rare MSDS that cannot be found online, we recommend you just scan the one provided by your supplier.  Most image file formats work with our tool, including pdf, jpg, tif, gif and png.


When you load each MSDS into our system, you also enter a "Date of Preparation".  As the 3-year expiry approaches, your safety administrator will be alerted.  Never fail another OH&S inspection on account of an old MSDS!

Our price is hard to beat too.  We're basically throwing it in with our Safety Management System.  One less headache without even denting your pocketbook!