When storing chemical products at your facility, it’s vital to keep an accurate record of your full chemical inventory. This is critical for safety and regulatory compliance, but it can also help drive down costs and support operational efficiency.
Why Inventory Management Matters?
To introduce effective chemical inventory management, it can be useful to understand why stock control is so important. There are several factors to consider including:
Legislative Compliance: Regulations require stringent documentation and control of hazardous chemicals to prevent illegal disposal, unauthorized access, or accidental release into the environment. You can find a full list of chemical related legislation on the HSE website but for many regulations, including COSHH, it is necessary to maintain a complete, up to date record of the chemicals stored on site in order to pass a compliance audit.
Emergency Preparedness: Hazardous chemicals pose risks, such as toxicity, flammability, and reactivity, which can lead to serious dangers including fire or explosion if mishandled. In the event of a fire or flood, the emergency services will need to know what chemicals are stored on site and where. Being able to relay these details to first responders can significantly minimize the risks involved, ensure rapid, appropriate medical treatment, and prevent further chemical reactions.
Waste Management: In addition to these factors, inventory control also prevents overstocking. This reduces the costs associated with storing excess product and any fees for waste management. As chemicals have a limited shelf life and can degrade over time, thereby becoming more hazardous, they need to be managed carefully. Efforts to avoid storing surplus chemicals ensure a safer workplace, support environmental sustainability and reduce costs, making this a fundamental aspect of responsible chemical management.
5 Best-Practices for Effective Stock Control
Whether you need to manage a variety of products over several sites, or a single bunded chemical store, the following inventory control measures can help you manage stock efficiently, ensuring not only that chemicals are stored securely, but that you know the quantities, types, and locations of all hazardous materials on site, at all times.
1) Introduce a chemical inventory
Your chemical inventory should catalogue every chemical held on site, logging details such as the chemical name, storage location, and temperature requirements. It should also comprise a record of Safety Data Sheet information and any hazard classifications or handling instructions. Update your database regularly with entries for any new chemicals or changes in storage location.
2) Track expiry dates
By monitoring and tracking chemical expiry dates, you can dispose of chemicals before they become dangerous or ineffective. This is essential to prevent safety risks caused by chemical degradation, which can lead to instability, increased toxicity, or reactivity over time. You will need to ensure clear procedures for timely disposal, often working with an authorised waste management facility to ensure compliance with relevant regulations.
3) Rotate stock
To minimise the risk of using chemicals that are past their expiration date, you may need to rotate stock using a first-in, first-out (FIFO) control method. This helps to ensure that older chemicals are used before newer ones, reducing the risk of expired chemicals accumulating. Stock rotation not only minimizes waste, but also prevents instability associated with aged chemicals and can reduce the costs involved in chemical management.
4) Ensure accurate labelling
Use appropriate labelling to identify each chemical, its hazards, expiration date, and safe handling instructions. Quick access to this information ensures accurate product identification, reducing confusion and minimising dangerous errors. Labels also enhance compliance with safety regulations, improve organization within your stores, and ensure that employees can safely access chemicals as needed.
5) Store chemicals properly
Keep chemicals at the correct temperature and away from heat, or ignition sources by specifying appropriate storage. For products such as solvents or fuel, you may need a flammables store, or even a fire protected store, depending on the location. Ensure that incompatible chemicals are not kept together as they can be dangerous if they come into contact with one another. By following the safety storage guidelines outlined for each chemical, you can prevent deterioration, reduce the risk of accidental reactions and minimise hazards.
Automating Chemical Inventory Management
To follow the steps outlined above, it’s likely you will need more than a simple Excel spreadsheet. Custom chemical inventory management software offers a solution with effective tools to automate stock control and ensure regulatory compliance.
Designed to track products from goods-in right through to waste disposal, chemical management software not only stores searchable information about chemicals, including their classification, usage, function and location, but it can also automate inventory management. By tracking and monitoring expiry dates, for example, it can issue alerts to ensure safe disposal, avoid overstocking and eliminate stock-outs.
Additional tools to create documentation such as instruction cards, permits or workplace risk assessments further support staff involved in chemical management to increase safety, ensure compliance, and boost efficiency.
For more ideas on bespoke chemical storage, talk to the experts at at Safety Storage Systems.