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Agile Product Lifecycle Management Product Governance and Compliance User Guide Release 9.3.3 E39296-01 |
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# 5 Substances Overview

Substances are basic building blocks in PG&C. A substance is any chemical element or compound that is tracked within Agile PLM. Because of complexities in how parts (that may contain substances) are used in products, the Substances base class has four predefined classes, each with a child subclass, to cover a variety of circumstances: Substances, Substance Groups, Materials, and Subparts.

- Substances class - a substance is a single chemical element; for example, lead, chromium, or cadmium. Generally, these are the potentially hazardous substances that legislations are interested in, as described in specifications. The Alias attribute was developed to handle inconsistencies in how substances are named and recognized by the PLM system.

- Substance Groups class - a group of multiple substances. A substance group must have a Base Substance, which is the substance that the legislation is interested in. A substance group called "Lead and Lead Compounds" would cite Lead as its base substance, and it could comprise chemicals like Lead-oxide, Lead-nitrate, and Lead-sulfate. See Substance Groups > Substances Tab > Conversion Factor.

- Materials class - a material is a compound chemical, that is, a substance consisting of multiple substances. A good example of a material is a glue or a resin that can be bought in bulk. See Materials and Subparts > Composition Tab.

- Subparts class - a subpart is a subunit of a component. Subparts are not numbered and do not expand the BOM. See More About Subparts.

## 5.1 Substances in PG&C Rollups

Substances are the subject of Substances and Weights rollups, which are documented in Substances and Weights Rollups using Excel Integration, in Internal Logic of Substances and Weights Rollups, and in External Compliance Rollups Reference. Compliance rollups are discussed in Rolling Up Compliance Data.

## 5.2 Tabs and Attributes in Substances

Many attributes in PG&C appear in several or all of the PG&C business objects, as well as items and manufacturer parts. Because any given attribute may be defined only once in this manual but may not be defined in this chapter, simply search the PDF for the attribute you want to see.

### 5.2.1 General Info Tab

The General Info tab provides general information about the substance, material, subpart, or substance group.

- Lifecycle Phase - When you create a substance, the default lifecycle phase is Active. To make the substance obsolete, change its lifecycle phase to Obsolete.

- CAS Number - Chemical Abstracts Service registry number, which identifies a chemical substance or molecular structure. (Agile does not enforce a unique CAS number, they are a reference tool.) This is especially helpful when there are multiple generic or proprietary names for a substance.

For more information about CAS numbers, see `http://www.cas.org/faq.html` `http://www.cas.org/faq.html`.

Note: An attribute called User-entered CAS Number can be entered by the information supplier on a declaration or by a regular user on a part or part group. These are used by the compliance manager to ascertain precisely what substance is being referred to by the supplier.

#### 5.2.1.1 Substances>Alias attribute

- Alias - This attribute is provided to inform the PG&C system of "substitute names" of substances. Your company has decided how to name your "global substances" (substances of concern to your company and, by extension, substance groups), but there are bound to be discrepancies when substances-in-parts are reported by your information suppliers or part information is imported or downloaded from other sources of data.

For example, an alias for Lead could be the chemical notation "Pb". The system can then resolve any confusion if a supplier submits information for a substance that they call Pb.

You can add and remove one or more alias from this attribute for any substance or substance group.

The maximum number of characters per alias is 300; the maximum number of characters for the Alias field is 4000.

For more information, see Substance Aliasing.

### 5.2.2 Where Used Tab

The Where Used tab lists all Latest Released revs of the top-level assemblies (TLA, the products) that contain, somewhere within their BOM, a composition using the particular substance, substance group, material, or subpart.

Where Used tab information is filled in automatically.

### 5.2.3 Substance Groups > Substances Tab > Conversion Factor

Since a substance group is an object that collects similarly-based substances, it is natural to have a Substances tab that lists them, just like a user group has a Users tab that lists its member users.

- Conversion Factor - Default conversion factor is 1. The value can be any non-negative number.

Note: Conversion Factor in substance groups is a different idea than Conversion Factor in part groups. See Part Groups > Parts Tab.

#### 5.2.3.1 Substance Groups and Conversion Factor

A substance group relates to a base substance. The base substance must be defined as a substance in Agile. The base substance is stored in the Base Substance field (a list field) that contains a list of all substances in your system.

Substance groups also contain a list of substances that relate to the base substance through a Conversion Factor. Substance groups can only contain substances, not other substance groups. Note that the base substance of a substance group cannot be changed once the substance group is used, or the Substances table of the substance group has substances.

The substances that belong to a substance group have a conversion factor that calculates (by weight) the amount of the base substance that is within one of the members of the substance group. For example, 1 gram of lead-oxide contains 0.78 grams of lead. The resulting conversion factor is "0.78".

Here is another example: let there be a substance group called "Lead-based Compounds," with a base substance Lead, and with lead-based compounds such as Lead Oxide, Lead Phosphate, and Lead Sulfate (among others). You enter conversion factors for these compounds of 0.866, 0.766, and 0.683, respectively. Now consider that you have a part that contains 1 gram of Lead Oxide, 2 grams of Lead Phosphate, and 3 grams of Lead Sulfate. The system takes these amounts against the conversion factors, and so calculates this equation: (1 x 0.866) + (2 x 0.766) + (3 x 0.683) which yields a total of 4.447 grams of Lead embedded in "Lead-based Compounds" in the part.

Therefore, substance groups calculate the total amount of their base substance, then behave as if they are their base substance.

Note: When you import a substance under a substance group to a declaration without a specification, or import a composition directly into a mfr. part (Substances table), if you do not specify the conversion factor for the substance, the conversion factor is copied from the global substance group, assuming the same substance exists there (previously it would leave the conversion factor unpopulated). The system does leave Conversion Factor blank if it is not entered and the substance does not exist in the global substance group.

The conversion factor is pertinent to substances and weights rollups, which are documented in Substances and Weights Rollups using Excel Integration and also in Internal Logic of Substances and Weights Rollups.

### 5.2.4 Materials and Subparts > Composition Tab

The Composition tab exists in the Materials and Subparts classes, not in the Substances and Substance Groups classes. However, this tab is disabled (not visible) out-of-the-box, so you may not see it.

The Composition tab on a material or subpart object is used to manage the substances that belong to that material or subpart. In the context of materials and subparts, a "composition" is a simple term. The Composition tab of materials and subparts is used for "recipe management," which is keeping track of the intended composition. This data has no impact on the compliance validation process.

Note: Simple compositions that are listed in the Composition tab of materials and subparts are not the same thing as the aggregate compositions that combine compliance information of part-spec-supplier (discussed in Compositions).

### 5.2.5 More About Subparts

A subpart is a subunit of a component manufacturer part. Subparts are not numbered and do not expand the BOM. For example, when your company uses a power supply made by a supplier, a BOM may just list "power supply," which is sufficient for manufacturing purposes. For compliance purposes, however, you may need information about substances in all the parts of the power supply - the switch, plate, coil, cord, plug, and so forth: for these you or your supplier would create subparts for the supplier to furnish information. There is no limit to the number of subparts in any assembly.

Therefore, a subpart may be thought of as the first level of the Bill of Material of the manufacturer part, that is, the supplier's BOM. Subparts and the other Substances classes have their own listing, the Bill of Substances.

## 5.3 Creating Substances

When you create most substances, the only required attribute you must specify is Name. The name must be unique. The name is case-insensitive, which means "ARSENIC" is treated the same as "Arsenic".

Both the Name and Base Substance attributes are required when you create a substance group.

To create a substance:

1. Click the Create New dropdown button to activate the menu.

2. Point to the Substances link, which sends the flyout menu of Substances classes.

   It is possible your administrator has renamed these or created additional Substances classes. Select and click a link from the list of Substances, Substance Groups, Materials, or Subparts.

3. When you create a substance, the only required attribute you must specify in the Create New dialog is Name. The name must be unique. The name is case-insensitive, which means "ARSENIC" is treated the same as "Arsenic". Enter the desired information in the Name: field.

   - Remember that substance groups also require a Base Substance to be specified. Use the Launch the Palette button to type or select an existing base substance.

   - If your PG&C solution has been configured for the JGPSSI class of Declarations, your administrator has set up a PageTwo field called Classification Number (Classification No) in substances and substance groups, and also a field called Level in substance groups: they are required when you create JGPSSI-specific substances.

4. Click the Save button. The new substance object appears with the General Info tab selected.

5. After the substance object is created, it can be modified at any time.

   Open the object, click Edit: add information and populate enabled fields under the various tabs.

   - Enter values for the Alias attribute that are alternate names for the substance that may be used by suppliers. See Substance Aliasing.

   - If you want to add attachments to this substance, choose from the Add menu (Files, URLs, or By Search), and navigate to the desired file or URL; or use Create button to create a new base substance; or "Type-ahead" to add existing substances.

   - When you have finished adding attachments, click Add.

6. To save your modifications, click Save.

## 5.4 Working with Substances

This section introduces features that have to do with substances, however, these features are part of removing potential blocks to declarations and compliance rollups, which are covered later in this manual. The PG&C solution is robust and multi-tiered, and this discussion proceeds as if you were already very familiar with the other PG&C objects. You may want to glance through the remainder of this chapter, and then return to it after becoming more familiar with other PG&C business objects.

Topics covered include Substance Aliasing, Mass Disclosure, Mass Tolerance, Intentional and Non-intentional Substances (and related properties), and Unreported Substances feature.

Tasks that describe how to add or edit substances on declarations are provided in Working with the Part Substances Table and Substance Editing.

### 5.4.1 Substance Aliasing

The Alias attribute (introduced in Substances > Alias attribute) provides the solution to this problem: whenever a supplier provides information about substances for a part, there is no guarantee that a substance with the exact same name exists in the buyer's system.

When an invalid substance is corrected or mapped to a substance in the system, the system adds the invalid substance as an alias to the substance. Whenever the same invalid substance is imported, it automatically maps to the objects. The system captures those invalid substances mapped to specific existing substances.

Note: You can remove an "alias" value any time from any substance; you cannot prevent an alias being added if you are correcting in a declaration. So, if you have performed a substance correction in a declaration that, for any reason, you consider a "one-time" correction, once you advance the declaration, you can open that substance object and remove the newly added alias value; the declaration you corrected would not need to be corrected again.

If you decide to create a new substance, you can do one of two things:

- Create a new substance and map the invalid substance to the new substance;

OR

- Create a substance with the same name as the invalid substance; in this case, the "invalid substance" does not exist anymore, as it has become a "global substance".

### 5.4.2 Mass Disclosure

The Mass Disclosure attribute is found on the Composition tab of parts and part groups, and on the Part/PG tabs of declarations. It has three values: Fully Disclosed, Partially Disclosed, and Undisclosed. The correct value is generated by the system during composition rollups. The definitions below apply to composition rollup run against internal specifications. Exceptions for compositions run against external specifications are noted below.

#### 5.4.2.1 Full Disclosure, Partial Disclosure, and No Disclosure

These are the three types of disclosure, and how they are qualified by substance compositions and homogeneous material compositions.

- Fully Disclosed composition (Full Disclosure):

  - A Substance composition is considered to be Fully Disclosed if the difference between the part's mass and the sum of the masses of all the substances is less than or equal to the Mass Tolerance Percentage setting. This applies to internal and external specifications.

  - A Homogeneous Material composition is Fully Disclosed if this two-step process is satisfied: (1) The difference between a material's mass (that is, the immediate parent of the substances) and the sum of mass of the substances under that material is less than or equal to the Mass Tolerance Percentage setting; and, (2) The difference between the part's mass and the sum of mass of the parents of the substances should be within the Mass Tolerance Percentage. This applies to internal specifications only. For external specifications, calculating Fully Disclosed for a homogeneous material compositions is the same as Substance composition.

- Partially Disclosed composition (Partial Disclosure):

  - A Substance composition is Partially Disclosed if the difference is more than the Mass Tolerance Percentage, in which case an "Unreported" substance is added by the system to fill in the missing mass. This applies to internal and external specifications. No "Unreported' substance is added by the system if you try to create a composition against external specification through declaration release and import.

  - A Homogeneous Material composition is Partially Disclosed if one of the following is true:

    (1) The difference between a material's mass (that is, the immediate parent of the substances) and the sum of mass of all the substances under that material is greater than the Mass Tolerance Percentage setting; and, (2) the difference between the part's mass and the sum of mass of the parents of the substances is greater than the Mass Tolerance Percentage setting; or

The part's weight is missing, but none of the information is missing in the BOS tree. That is, the Mass and PPM should not be "null" anywhere in the entire BOS tree, including subparts, materials, or substances. This applies to internal specifications only. Calculating Partially Disclosed for compositions against external specifications will apply the same logic as substance composition, i.e.: if the difference is more than the Mass Tolerance Percentage.

- Undisclosed composition (Non-disclosure):

  - If the Mass is missing for the part, substance, or the immediate parent of the substances, it is considered an Undisclosed composition. This applies to internal specifications only.

  - Furthermore, a Homogeneous Material composition is Undisclosed if any of these cases are true:

One of the substances lacks a Declared Mass and lacks a Declared PPM; or,

One of the materials lacks a Declared Mass; or,

One of the materials does not have any substance; or,

One of the subparts does not have any child. This applies to internal specifications only. Compositions run against external specifications have no "Undisclosed" value.

### 5.4.3 Mass Tolerance

A part/part group or assembly has mass (weight) and all its substances/materials have individual masses: if the sum of their masses does not match exactly, the system checks whether the sum of the material masses falls within the tolerance (%) of the part's mass. This tolerance - between 0-5% - has been set by the administrator as a systemwide setting, so it applies across all objects analyzed by PG&C (the end-user does not see this value in the user interface).

To describe the effect with an example: let Mass Tolerance Percentage be 1% and part P1's mass is 90 g. The composition will be identified as Fully Disclosed as long as the sum of its materials (the Bill Of Substances mass) is at least 89.1 (because 1% of 90 is 0.9). With the tolerance factored in, the mere fact of "missing substances" are not enough to throw off compliance, and the rollup can effectively interpret the composition as Compliant.

Mass Tolerance Percentage facilitates error correction, so it is likely that the value will be even smaller than the 1% in this example, perhaps closer to 0.1%.

Now, if the sum of BoS mass is any smaller than 89.1, let's say (89.099) our system will add Unreported substance for 0.901 grams that is "missing" (this topic is in Unreported Substances in Partially Disclosed Compositions).

Note that the system stores both mass and normalized mass; when it compares masses, only the normalized masses are compared.

Higher tolerance can have negative impact on partially disclosed compositions.

### 5.4.4 Mass Tolerances for External Specifications

External specifications calculate weight for each substance in the BOS and take the sum of calculated mass of each substance to compare the composition weight. Remember that internal specifications take the sum of its materials (the bill of substance mass).

#### 5.4.4.1 Example for calculating mass of each substance against external specification:

Assume the composition mass is 1g:

Substance | Mass | Declared PPM
--- | --- | ---
Lead | 0.25g | 500
Al | 0.75g | 1000

Internal Specification case:

Mass of Lead + Mass of Al = 0.25 + 0.75 = 1g equal to composition mass, then it is Fully Disclosed.

External Specification case:

Calculated mass of Lead=1*500/1000000 = 0.0005g

Calculated mass of Al=1*1000/1000000 = 0.001g

Sum of calculated mass=0.0005 + 0.001 = 0.0015g less composition mass, then it is Partially Disclosed.

### 5.4.5 Intentional and Non-intentional Substances and Related Attributes

Homogeneous materials can contain two types of substances, intentional substances and non-intentional substances (contaminations).

Intentional substances are intentionally part of a material. For example, stainless steel contains 9% Nickel. Nickel is an intentional substance in stainless steel that makes it corrosion-free. However, during production of steel, certain contaminations can be introduced as the result of impurities in the base steel or because of the manufacturing process. These contaminations are non-intentional - but they are still part of the final product.

Certain legislations do not allow for "intentional adding" of certain substances - such as lead - but allow a certain percentage of lead in the product through contaminations, that is, "unintentional adding" of substances. Other legislations add the total amount of a substance - both intentional and non-intentional - and prescribe a maximum threshold value.

#### 5.4.5.1 Intentionally Added

The "Intentionally Added" property acts as the constraint defined in the Joint Industry Guide and the IPC 1752 forms. The Intentionally Added attribute is a "Yes/No" attribute in all the Parts/Part Groups > Compliance tab > Substances tables and Declarations > Parts/Part Groups tabs > Substances tables.

If, for a substance in the specification, Disallow Intentionally Adding is Yes, when a supplier or other user enters Yes in Intentionally Added, the substance's Calculated Compliance value is Non-compliant. If that substance was not intentionally added (= No), the system can go ahead and check the Threshold PPM of the substance-for-the-spec; also see Disallow Intentionally Adding. This applies only for internal specifications; external specifications do not include the property in rollups.

The compliance manager can modify Intentionally Added in the Pending status of the Default Declarations Workflow. The supplier can modify it in the Open to Supplier status of the same workflow. It cannot be modified in any other status (without administrator impact). If there is no value in Intentionally Added field, the system assumes No when performing rollup calculations.

For internal specifications, this is a special use case for Intentionally Added: If the Result PPM for the substance is 0, and both Intentionally Added flags in specification and composition are Yes, the Calculated Compliance for this substance will be Non-compliant: because the user indicated that the substance in the composition was added intentionally, it composition should be Non-compliant even though the PPM is 0.

Note The Intentionally Added flag on Substances table applies to the Substances and Weights Rollup and External Rollup features.

#### 5.4.5.2 Disallow Intentionally Adding

Found on Specifications > Substances table, the default value of Disallow Intentionally Adding is No, so that it allows the Intentionally Added property to be in effect. If this were set to Yes, Intentionally Added does not take effect. No "blank" value is allowed for this property.

#### 5.4.5.3 Specification Intentionally Added

In parts/part groups and declarations, the Substance tables also have an attribute called Spec Intentionally Added. This property points to, on the substance's Specifications > Substances tab, the value of attribute Disallow Intentionally Adding. This read-through attribute is readable and searchable but cannot be modified. For existing customers who do not have an Intentionally Added flag in the Specifications > Substances tab, the system assumes that it is set to No.

### 5.4.6 Unreported Substances in Partially Disclosed Compositions

There is a system-generated entity or object that "fills in" the unaccounted difference between the total mass of the part or assembly and the sum of all its constituent substances. The name in the application is "Unreported (System)" and it can simply be referred to as "unreported substance." The unreported substance is searchable in the application; the user can edit any field in the PageOne or PageTwo of an unreported substance, excluding the name. But you cannot delete the unreported substance. Its presence in a composition is inferred when compliance rollups mark a composition as Compliant but the weights of the part and its substances do not match.

Note: An unreported substance cannot be added manually by a user; that is, the purpose of the unreported substance is circumvented if an object called "Unreported Substance" or the like is created and used as a "filler" - the system should be allowed to work its calculations and create the entity as needed. Note that it is possible for an unreported substance to be added by a compliance rollup.

Caution: The Mass Tolerance Pct. setting and the Unreported (System) substance is used expressly to account for small discrepancies between part mass and substance mass. It is not to be used to "hide" a portion of substances in a declaration that could be thought of as a proprietary formula (or "recipe") in a manufacturer's product.

#### 5.4.6.1 Conditions When the System Adds the Unreported Substance

The following lists conditions that must be satisfied for the system to add an unreported substance to a composition.

#### 5.4.6.2 In declarations (Internal Specifications Only)

The "Unreported (System)" substance is added when the declaration is moved to the next status, except when moving from Pending to any non-Released status; also, when the user chooses Actions > Calculate Compliance.

#### 5.4.6.3 For Substance Composition (Internal Specifications Only)

If the mass of each substance/substance group in the part and the mass of the part are available, the system adds up the masses of the substances and compares the total sum with the mass of the part.

- If the part's mass is greater than the sum of substances masses, the system adds the Unreported (System) substance to the part and set the weight difference in that substance's Calculated Mass attribute.

- If Mass Tolerance Percentage is set (in Administrator) and the mismatch of "total masses" falls within the tolerance range, the system does not add the unreported substance.

- If the part's mass is less than the sum of the masses of the substances, the system does not add the unreported substance and does not set the negative weight.

- If the mass of the part is missing, or the mass (or Declared PPM) of any one of the substances is missing, the system does not add the unreported substance.

#### 5.4.6.4 homogeneous Material Composition (Internal Specifications Only)

If the mass of each homogeneous material is available, the mass (declared or calculated) of each substance in that material is available, and the mass of the part is available, the system compares the material-mass with the sum of the substances mass and it compares the part-mass with the sum of the materials mass.

- The unreported substance is added to a homogeneous material declaration only if it is Partially Disclosed.

- If the composition is Partially Disclosed and the material-mass is greater than the sum of substances-mass, the unreported substance is added under the material.

- If one of the substances in the material does not have a mass and declared PPM, or if the material does not have a mass, the system does not add the unreported substance.

- If there are two materials, one Undisclosed and the other Partially Disclosed, the system does not add the unreported substance to the Partially Disclosed material, since the entire composition becomes Undisclosed.

#### 5.4.6.5 Unreported Substance When Importing Substances to Items and Manufacturer Parts (Internal Specifications Only)

- The unreported substance is added after the import process is complete.

- If the composition's mass is blank, the system uses the value in Mass attribute (found on General Info of items and Title Block of mfr. parts) in doing a composition rollup, and it copies the mass to the Composition table of the part.

After the rollup is done, if the value of Mass in PageOne of the part is changed, the system does not recalculate the composition.