NEEDHAM, MA – PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC) has announced the availability of its PTC Materials Compliance Solution for conflict minerals as a managed service. The PTC Materials Compliance Solution for conflict minerals enables manufacturers to comply with regulations from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) governing the identification and reporting of conflict minerals within their products and across their supply chains. With the first SEC filing deadline just six months away, the new rapid deployment option for PTC’s solution enables companies to quickly implement a systematic response to this fresh compliance challenge.
In 2010, the U.S. Congress passed legislation, known as the Dodd-Frank Act, that includes a provision requiring manufacturers to investigate the sources of tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold used in their products, and to identify whether any such materials originated in or around the war-torn region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These minerals are referred to as “conflict minerals.” Under Dodd-Frank, companies listed on the U.S. stock exchanges have until May 31, 2014 to make their first annual disclosure about the use of conflict minerals. In addition, the rules impact companies not directly regulated by the SEC, as compliance requirements are applied across the entire supply chain, thus reaching hundreds of thousands of non-SEC registered companies that supply components to SEC registered companies.
With the PTC Materials Compliance Solution for conflict minerals, organizations can systematically assess and report on the status of conflict minerals within their products and across their supply chain. They also can automate the collection of supply chain data and reasonable country of origin inquiries (RCOI), generate internal risk assessment reports, and collect key information needed for the reports required by both the SEC and customers. By delivering it as a managed service, PTC installs, operates, and maintains all software and related infrastructure necessary to support the solution – relieving customers from the burden often placed on internal IT organizations from the demands of a new enterprise application. This enables companies to simplify compliance with the new rules, demonstrate due diligence for auditors, and protect their brand and revenue streams – all at reduced cost.
Overall, the PTC Materials Compliance Solution provides a scalable approach for addressing other and possible future regulations and efficiently managing changes to existing regulations as an integrated component of a manufacturer’s product development strategy. The solution is used today by some of the most forward-thinking companies for compliance with a broad range of environmental and related regulations, such as REACH and RoHS. One company in particular, Motorola Mobility, a Google company, is already using the PTC Materials Compliance Solution to support its industry-trend-setting compliance efforts.
“At Motorola Mobility, we take a systems approach to environmental data management and compliance, and the PTC Materials Compliance Solution delivers a common platform and standard processes to help us manage our initiatives,” stated Bill Olson, Director Office of Sustainability and Stewardship, Motorola Mobility. “PTC’s conflict minerals solution helps us to automate our mature compliance processes, establish a solid reporting system to efficiently meet regulatory and customer requirements, and further distinguish our corporate leadership in the area of compliance.”
“The clock is ticking – and it is no small task to collect and validate supplier disclosures, assess supplier and product compliance status, and generate conflict minerals reports to meet SEC, auditor, and customer requirements,” stated Howard Heppelmann, general manager, Supply Chain Management Segment, PTC. “Our technology solution has been proven to deliver a comprehensive and systematic approach to efficiently enable conflict minerals compliance by industry leaders like Motorola, and now we’re making it more flexible to procure and deploy.”
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