The list of regulatory requirements for manufacturing companies is continuously growing. For procurement, this means an increasing documentation effort, because without complete material data, market bans, fines of up to 100,000 Euros, and the loss of strategic customers are imminent. At the same time, a proactive approach to material compliance offers the opportunity to answer customer inquiries more quickly and differentiate oneself in the market.

In the webinar, Lisa Stahl (Procurement Excellence Team at Fischer) and Simon Vötter (Customer Development at Tacto) demonstrate how Fischer is transitioning from reactive to proactive material compliance, systematically capturing over 20,000 components from more than 3,000 suppliers in the process.

Regulatory Requirements at a Glance

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From REACH and RoHS to PFAS and the new EU Packaging Regulation PPWR: manufacturing companies across all industries are facing increasing regulatory pressure. For REACH alone, SVHC substances in articles exceeding 0.1 weight percent must be communicated and reported throughout the entire supply chain. Under RoHS, maximum substance limits apply to lead, cadmium, and mercury in every component, and a declaration of conformity is mandatory. For OEM suppliers, a missing declaration of conformity can lead to delisting.

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Fischer's Compliance Challenge

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Fischer is a globally leading manufacturer of fastening systems and mounting solutions with approximately 4,800 employees. Lisa Stahl's Procurement Excellence Team is responsible for material compliance for over 20,000 components from more than 3,000 suppliers. The particular challenge: compliance information must be recorded not only at the article level, but also at the combination of supplier and material, as an article from different sources can have varying material compositions.

Before the implementation of Tacto, Fischer's process was reactive: Upon a customer inquiry regarding REACH or RoHS, procurement initiated manual supplier requests via email, consolidated individual data sheets, and answered the inquiry on a case-by-case basis. The consequences were fragmented Excel spreadsheets on shared drives, data silos between procurement, quality, and development, and a laborious email ping-pong without tracking or automatic reminders.

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From Reactive to Proactive Compliance Management

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The decisive step for Fischer was the shift from a reactive to a proactive approach. Instead of restarting the same manual process for every customer inquiry, Fischer is building a central, structured compliance dataset with Tacto. Each supply source, meaning the unique combination of supplier and article, receives its own compliance status, which is filterable by SVHC status, exemptions, CAS number, and expiration date.

Tacto automates supplier inquiries: Pre-configured inquiry templates are sent to suppliers, who enter their responses directly into a structured format. The feedback automatically flows into the database, eliminating the need for purchasers to manually extract information from individual PDFs. Over time, this creates a complete compliance dataset that allows customer inquiries to be answered in hours instead of weeks.

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Conclusion

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Fischer's practical example illustrates that material compliance in procurement is not a one-time project, but an ongoing process that remains barely scalable without a central database and automation. Those who transition from reactive documentation to proactive compliance management not only reduce risks and effort but also create a real competitive advantage in customer inquiries and OEM audits.

Lisa Stahl (Procurement Excellence Team, Fischer) and Simon Vötter (Customer Development, Tacto) demonstrate how Fischer is transitioning from reactive to proactive material compliance for over 20,000 components and more than 3,000 suppliers. In the webinar, they provide an overview of the most important regulations from REACH to PPWR, explain Fischer's path to a central compliance dataset at the supply source level, and demonstrate Tacto's Material Compliance Module live.

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