Expanding Microsoft’s Compliance Platform for Sustainability

Objectives

In 2020 Microsoft committed to ‘zero waste’ by 2030 and also set Cloud Responsible Packaging Goals, to ensure its cloud hardware packaging meets global regulatory compliance requirements and creates minimal environmental impact. Additionally, as the compliance landscape changes rapidly with emerging worldwide packaging regulations such as Substances of Concern in Products (SCIP), Microsoft wanted to integrate new functionality into its compliance platform to better track and measure sustainability.

Project

Anthesis worked with Microsoft’s internal teams including Cloud Hardware Infrastructure Engineering and Cloud Supply Chain Sustainability and external stakeholders such as Contract Manufacturers and European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to build a solution with the following capability:

• Capturing material content and sustainability data for packaging from suppliers
• Validating the collected packaging data against a packaging specification
• Reporting on sustainability data to demonstrate corporate sustainability goal are met
• Reporting on material content to ensure regulatory compliance requirements are met

Services

Our process included:

• Supplier training webinars and helpdesk
• Data validation protocol
• Email workflow

Technology involved:

• Excel Packaging Template compliant with IPC-1752A
• The Compliance Map
• Power BI

Impacts

• Capability to collect packaging data from global supply chain using single request and template
• Ability to validate packaging data
• Ability to obtain packaging data for carbon and waste calculations
• Ability to facilitate supplier emission reduction planning
• Ability to submit SCIP dossiers to ECHA
• Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis