Making Product Stewardship Work for Small Companies

Priyanka Sura and Justin Moore of ANGUS Chemical Company presented at Product Stewardship 2018, detailing ANGUS’s implementation of product stewardship in their talk Product Stewardship: A Partnership in Safety and Business Development. Moore was emphatic: “In small companies, this process can work.”

As a smaller-scale manufacturer, late-stage failure of a product would be lethal to ANGUS. Accordingly, Sura and Moore talked about how product stewardship is baked into their design process at several stages. Their assessment process considers product, application, region, and end use to develop safe products that are created well.

To achieve excellent product stewardship, ANGUS relies heavily on collaboration across the organization as well as with stakeholders, regulators, and customers. This helps everyone at ANGUS understand the impact of design decisions and consider the needs and views of all parties. A suite of tools allows ANGUS to gather a weight of evidence that identifies red flags early.

Sura and Moore stressed that even with a product stewardship program that meets ANGUS’s needs, they aren’t resting on their laurels. “What works now may not work in a year,” Moore said. To keep improving, ANGUS has invested in training across the organization so that safety staff understand product development and vice versa. Ultimately, their goal is to reduce risk to enable innovation.

Attendees posed practical questions about how to include safety considerations early in the process and about specific tools ANGUS uses. Sura and Moore were able to address these questions with real-life experience from their work at ANGUS.