The Success of Compliance Management in the Chemical Industry

Since the turn of the millennium, the ever-changing global political climate has exposed more and more gaps in our national security interests, and shown that more stringent standards are required for such interests, to ensure both our safety and security. As recently as 2007, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) introduced a series of legislative programs, in an attempt to specifically address this issue for a number of industries. One such program was the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program. This set of regulations aimed to protect, and prepare, high-risk chemical facilities from attacks, and while the chemical industry was not the only one affected by this round of legislature, it was one of the more critical ones. While the need to enforce standards that protect human, physical and intellectual assets is obvious, and is directly tied to an organization's integrity, there are of course added costs to ensure that these standards are met. The main issue now for the organisation's CSO, is reducing the impact of these costs on the company's budget. And with the costs of non-compliance ranging from hefty fines to complete plant shutdown, it becomes imperative that at the same time, corners are not cut in the process. As such, CSO's now have a higher responsibility to shoulder, and their actions have a more direct impact on the profitability of the business. Fortunately, compliance management has come a long way, and has helped the process immensely. Technology has been playing an increasingly larger role in easing the burden of complying with federal regulations, and is one of the main reasons that CFATS has broadened its acceptance in the chemical industry. From cutting paperwork costs, to ensuring that captured data can be more easily shared without compromising security, technology is helping to pave the way for cost effective compliance management within the chemical industry. With new compliance management systems becoming simpler and simpler to integrate with existing systems, the changeover from the entirely manual compliance management systems that many chemical facilities may have had in the past, has been made easier over time. The DHS has also been very helpful in aiding this transition, by promoting the merging of active security systems with compliance management technology, to ensure that the process of assessing and resolving security and safety risks is as simple, seamless and interconnected as possible.

Motion Computing J3400

With an advanced outdoor display, dual hot-swap batteries and high resistance to shock, dust and water, this Tablet PC is perfect for the outdoor user. Motion Computing, known for their rugged tablet PCs, have once again proved themselves with their latest release. While the PC is designed to be used standing up, its portable convertible keyboard is impressive, and allows a degree of flexibility to the user. It comes with Windows Vista Business as standard, and has inbuilt GPS, WiFi, an Intel Core2 Duo processor and a monster 4GB of RAM. At an estimated 7.4 hours, its long battery life means you won't need to swap batteries while out in the field, but if you do, the dual hot-swap batteries make the process effortless. Whether you are an inspector, surveyor or an architect, the J3400 is certain to suit your needs. HTC Touch Diamond2 Building on the initial success of the Touch Diamond, HTC will be releasing the Touch Diamond2. With the Diamond2, HTC have redesigned the front of the handset, to give it a cleaner, sleeker and more minimalist look. While retaining all the best features of the original Touch Diamond (great camera, high quality touch keypad and HTC's Touchflo operating system), it gets rid of the Touch Diamond's biggest flaws, namely it's flimsy build quality and unstable software. There has been a noticeable improvement in the operating system's overall performance, and the onboard GPS particularly is much faster than its predecessor's. Along with this, HTC has also introduced a touch sensitive zoom-control bar at the bottom of the screen, which is used as a dedicated zooming control in many of the phone's applications, helping to simplify many actions such as web and image browsing. All in all, the Touch Diamond2 is a definite improvement on the original, and a worthy addition to HTC's catalogue.