From a push to a pull approach to compliance

Many compliance leaders with a background in manufacturing will already be familiar with push and pull systems of production. Just as manufacturing teams once struggled with overproduction and inventory waste before shifting to pull principles, EHS teams face a similar struggle with regulatory volatility and uncertainty. By applying these operational concepts to compliance, teams can minimize wasted effort and be more responsive to regulatory change.

In this article, Product Marketing Manager Ben Preater compares these two approaches, explaining how they relate to EHS compliance, and exploring how new technologies are facilitating a move from push-based to pull-based approaches, just as they have done for manufacturing.

An introduction to push and pull systems

In a push system, businesses manage production based on forecasted demand. These forecasts are typically produced ahead of time and on a regular cycle, based on historical sales data and market research. A push approach offers certain efficiencies but also serious potential drawbacks. For example, inaccuracies in forecasting can lead to overproduction and waste. This model also offers limited flexibility in responding to changing circumstances mid-cycle.

In response to these challenges, and building on new emerging methodologies — such as lean manufacturing — businesses have increasingly moved towards pull systems of production.

In a pull system, production is based on real-time customer demand, with production levels adjusted on the fly accordingly. This results in reduced waste, lower excess inventory, and increased flexibility to adapt to changes in the marketplace.

The challenges of a push-based approach to EHS compliance

Global businesses often operate across dozens of jurisdictions. Each has different EHS requirements, and key information about new regulations coming down the pipeline is often hidden in a confusing array of government sources, publications, and reports. Many compliance teams struggle to keep up.

Without timely intelligence, compliance teams often work from stale forecasts. They may spend time and resources preparing for regulations that evolve differently than expected, leading to wasted effort, rushed last-minute changes, or even compliance lapses.

In the worst-case scenario, teams might find out about new regulatory requirements as, or even after, the changes come into effect, causing significant disruption and business risk.

Historically, EHS compliance teams seeking to take a proactive approach had no choice but to adopt a ‘push’ model. This often meant carrying out a review of the regulatory landscape and trying to forecast what would be coming down the pipeline. It did go some way towards reducing risk, but not sufficiently to optimize processes and compliance.

As in manufacturing, push-style forecasting is not always accurate and lacks a mechanism for responding quickly to changes in the regulatory landscape. With the difficulty of keeping track of ever-changing requirements across multiple jurisdictions, it can be easy for things to slip through the cracks.

Towards a pull-based system of EHS compliance

Today, digital platforms and intelligence tools make it possible to shift from guesswork and periodic reviews to continuous, on-demand awareness — mirroring the ‘just-in-time’ principle in manufacturing.

Regulatory Forecaster from Enhesa EHS Intelligence offers a new, better way for global businesses to monitor the EHS regulations that impact their operations.

Enhesa’s global team of 160+ experts monitors emerging regulations worldwide for a fraction of the cost of using in-house resources. They analyze the key requirements and business impacts, translating complex regulations into intuitive, standardized intelligence. All this is available on-demand via Enhesa’s online platform, with notifications sent directly to users’ inboxes when something important changes.

In short, Regulatory Forecaster provides businesses with cost-efficient, accurate, up-to-date intelligence on evolving EHS requirements. This empowers them to take a pull approach to their compliance, drawing on up-to-date information to continually adapt their approach to compliance. This approach has several benefits…

1. It reduces operational waste

Redesigning processes, retraining staff, and reconfiguring operations costs time and money. These costs only increase when changes need to be made at short notice. By pulling the latest regulatory data as changes are proposed, Regulatory Forecaster gives corporate teams maximal breathing room to make the required changes and reduces wasted effort.

Rather than spending months preparing for a regulation that might not materialize, teams can strategically allocate resources based on real-time signals.

2. It makes businesses more responsive to change

Like a pull system in manufacturing, Regulatory Forecaster gives businesses the flexibility they need to respond to change as it happens. Rather than relying on forecasts as an imperfect view of what needs to be done, EHS professionals can make exactly the changes that are needed, exactly when they are needed.

This approach is considerably more efficient, mirroring just-in-time production to ensure teams address actual — not hypothetical — regulatory demands.

3. It decreases the risk of non-compliance

Regulatory timetables don’t always align with a company’s compliance review cycles — plus, unexpected changes happen. The best way to ensure compliance is, therefore, to get the most up-to-date information on new and upcoming changes as they emerge. Regulatory Forecaster provides exactly this, reducing the risk of key details being missed.

Conclusion

New technologies like Regulatory Forecaster are enabling a new pull-based approach to compliance that could be transformative for global EHS teams. By integrating continuous, actionable regulatory intelligence, companies gain more efficiency, more agility, and reduced business risk—benefits that mirror the evolution manufacturing went through in recent decades. As manufacturers did in recent decades, compliance teams are also finding that the benefits are clear: more efficiency, more agility, and reduced business risk.

If you’d like to learn even more about how you can adopt continuous improvement best practices in your EHS compliance program, why not read our whitepaper, where we worked with Bureau Veritas to develop a 6-step process for continuous compliance improvement: Reinforcing EHS regulations with continuous compliance