Companies must take responsibility for ensuring their products are manufactured without harmful substances. To achieve this, they need to establish strategies and processes that support compliance. The Material Compliance Officer plays a vital cross-functional role within the company’s organizational structure.
Their primary responsibility is to coordinate the implementation of material compliance requirements across various departments. In addition, they serve as a key source of information and expertise—both internally and externally.
I. What Is a Material Compliance Manager or Officer?
The Material Compliance Officer holds a cross-hierarchical role within the company, acting both as an internal knowledge provider and as a monitoring and escalation authority. As a knowledge provider, they support the company in implementing legal requirements relevant to its products. This requires the ability to interpret legal texts and assess their significance for the company. One recurring challenge is determining whether a company—or more precisely, its products—falls within the scope of a particular regulation. It’s important to consider that both purchased components and finished products can pass through various legal jurisdictions as they move through the supply chain. Companies must take these changing regulatory scopes into account. Material-specific requirements—and the transitions between legal scopes—must be communicated clearly within the supply chain to close potential communication gaps between the company and its suppliers. A company must understand which legal requirements are necessary for regulated market access, and this knowledge must be passed on to suppliers. This forms the shared foundation for material compliance communication between the company and its supply chain partners.
A Material Compliance Manager should ideally have a general affinity for chemistry, as this helps in translating vague or broadly worded legal requirements into concrete internal guidelines. This chemical understanding is particularly valuable when evaluating whether certain materials used in components might be subject to substance restrictions or bans. One of the key tasks is to distill complex relationships into concise, actionable requirements. Today’s legal documents are often written in a highly formal, almost literary style, making it difficult to immediately identify the practical requirements they contain. Therefore, the Material Compliance Officer should build a strong information network to stay ahead in a rapidly changing regulatory landscape—especially when it comes to substance-related changes in legislation. Time is a critical factor. If a company is able to identify and phase out a substance before it becomes legally restricted—especially during product development—it can gain a significant competitive advantage over others in the market.
II. Why Does a Company Need a Material Compliance Officer?
Before implementing material compliance measures within a company, it’s essential that everyone involved understands: this process must be supported by a dedicated plan for both personnel and financial resources. Many organizations still treat material compliance as a niche topic—often assigning it as an additional responsibility to an already overextended employee. This mindset is highly problematic. Every future Material Compliance Manager must clearly define the time and resources needed—not only for their own tasks but also for the involvement of colleagues across departments—and communicate this transparently as part of the company’s resource planning.
In the past, many companies either underestimated the importance of material compliance or chose to ignore it for various reasons. But public attention can shift rapidly, as the Volkswagen emissions scandal dramatically demonstrated. At the same time, public awareness regarding the environmental impact of products is growing steadily. A key element of environmental compatibility is knowledge about the substances and materials used in a product. It is becoming increasingly important for companies to understand the material composition of their products in detail, in order to manage the growing complexity of material compliance efficiently.
Failure to comply with material compliance regulations can have serious consequences—both civil and criminal. According to Section 433 of the German Civil Code (BGB) [1], the seller is obligated to deliver a product free of material and legal defects. If a legally restricted substance is present in a product, this may be considered a material defect, giving the buyer grounds for legal claims. It’s important to note that many regulations prohibit the presence of certain substances outright—regardless of whether they pose a direct health risk to the end user. This disconnect between legal standards and public perception can be illustrated with a simple example from the food and beverage industry. If you asked people on the street how much alcohol is allowed in a “non-alcoholic” beer, the common answer would likely be “none.” However, under German law, beverages with up to 0.5% alcohol can still be labeled as non-alcoholic. According to the Food Information Regulation [2], alcohol content must only be explicitly declared from 1.2% onwards. This example shows how personal assumptions often differ significantly from the actual legal definitions. And when products fall under multiple legal jurisdictions, it introduces further complexity and potential for confusion or legal disputes.
If a company is found to be in violation of material compliance regulations, the question of accountability immediately arises. One of the first questions asked is:
“What organizational measures has the company taken to ensure compliance with material regulations?”
One such organizational measure could be the appointment of a dedicated Material Compliance Manager, tasked with defining, supporting, and monitoring compliance responsibilities across the company. This role provides guidance to various departments—particularly when deviations require corrective action. However, the Material Compliance Manager is not personally responsible for the compliance of individual products. Compliance is achieved through collaboration between all relevant departments, such as procurement, engineering, production, sales, and others. In many cases, the Material Compliance Manager also plays a key role in reporting implementation progress to executive management, particularly as part of corporate compliance or sustainability reporting structures.
III. What Does a Material Compliance Manager Need?
1. Executive Support
For a Material Compliance Manager, support from executive leadership is a critical foundation. It enables them to act effectively when it comes to taking necessary actions, making decisions, and escalating issues. Any material compliance initiative launched without clear backing from top management—including the allocation of appropriate personnel and financial resources—is bound to fail.
2. Assertiveness
A successful Material Compliance Manager must be comfortable handling resistance. Implementing material compliance requirements within an organization is often a challenging path. The manager will encounter significant opposition and pushback—often for a variety of reasons. One of the most common is simply the unfamiliarity of the topic, typically expressed as: “We’ve never done it this way before.” To implement compliance successfully, it’s essential to anticipate such resistance and proactively develop strategies to overcome it. The manager must also be prepared to escalate issues when necessary and ensure that material compliance is recognized as a company-wide responsibility. Only when all departments work in alignment can compliance be achieved.
3. A Recognized Product Attribute
We strongly recommend integrating material compliance into the concept of product characteristics, since customers generally assume compliance with substance restrictions as a given. By elevating compliance to the level of a core product attribute, companies reinforce its importance over time and internalize it as equal to other technical specifications.
4. Requirements Matrix
One key responsibility of the Material Compliance Manager is to develop a requirements matrix. This document compiles all material-restricting regulations relevant to the company’s legal jurisdictions—whether defined by its location, target markets, or customer requirements. The matrix should include applicable legal scopes, regulated substances, exemption rules, and revision intervals. It serves as the company’s internal reference for ensuring that products meet all compliance requirements.
5. Material Compliance Technical Specification
The material-related requirements identified in the matrix should be consolidated into a company-specific material compliance specification. This technical document should be included in all contractual agreements with suppliers, such as statements of work, master agreements, quality agreements, technical drawings, and more. Doing so ensures that compliance expectations are clearly communicated to suppliers. At the same time, the specification should be shared internally—for example, with product development—particularly when it becomes a formal part of the product definition or specification package.
[More information on the Material Compliance Specification: https://www.tec4u-solutions.com/en/material-compliance-specification]
6. Process Analysis and Integration
The first step in implementing material compliance is conducting a status analysis of existing business processes. The Material Compliance Manager reviews the current process landscape and works with relevant departments to identify optimal integration points for compliance tasks. These integration points must be determined in consensus with the departments involved, since implementation may increase their workload. Integrating material compliance into existing processes has proven to be the most sustainable approach. Attempts to establish compliance as an isolated process have failed in all known scenarios. As mentioned earlier, treating material compliance as a core product attribute makes it easier to find the right process anchors.
Compliance implementation must also be monitored and documented through existing audit and quality management systems. If deviations are identified, clear corrective actions must be defined and executed.
[More on process integration: https://www.tec4u-solutions.com/en/steps-towards-material-compliance/]
7. IEC 63000
To meet substance-specific requirements, companies must engage directly with their suppliers. Legal regulations typically do not provide detailed implementation strategies, so companies must rely on recognized guidelines—such as those issued by national authorities for REACH, CLP, and Biocides [3]—or follow structured frameworks like DIN EN IEC 63000 [4].
IEC 63000 supports supplier collaboration for material compliance under global RoHS directives and outlines five key elements:
- Assessing the trustworthiness of suppliers
- Establishing contractual agreements
- Requesting product-specific material compliance information
- Conducting risk analysis for components with missing data
- Verifying high-risk components through chemical analysis
In addition to collecting declarations from suppliers, companies must develop contingency strategies for cases where no information is received. Here, the Material Compliance Manager’s background in chemistry can be crucial—especially in assessing purchased items with missing data. If no reliable conclusion can be drawn, the final option may be to conduct chemical analyses to confirm the absence of restricted substances. The manager can also advise on the appropriate type and scope of these analyses.
8. Communication Software
Given that the number of suppliers to be contacted can quickly reach into the hundreds or thousands, using specialized software has become a proven solution for both communication and documentation. Suppliers can be queried on specific substance-restricting regulations, such as REACH [5] or RoHS [6]. As recommended in IEC 63000, the goal should be to obtain article-specific declarations—meaning that the supplier confirms compliance for each item, clearly identified by name and part number. Previously, these requests were often managed manually via spreadsheets and emails, which becomes unmanageable at scale. With dedicated software tools, all communication steps and results are securely documented. In case of a compliance violation, this documentation provides a clear audit trail and helps identify where responsibility lies.
[More on Material Compliance Software DataCross: https://data-cross.de/en/datacross-home/]
IV. Appointing a Material Compliance Officer
Years of practical experience have shown that in more than three-quarters of cases, the position of the Material Compliance Manager is placed within the Quality Management (QM) department. This makes sense, as QM is responsible for monitoring and continuously improving process quality. Since material compliance is implemented within the existing process landscape, quality management is well positioned to oversee and support compliance efforts. Only when material compliance requirements are embedded in processes in a way that makes them auditable, consistently monitored over time, and subject to clear consequences in case of non-compliance, can we expect material compliance to evolve beyond a niche topic and become a standard element of product development.
V. Summary and Sources
The Material Compliance Manager must be recognized as the individual who elevates material compliance to a binding, company-wide standard—through their role, their position, and their actions. This person is not directly responsible for implementing product-specific compliance requirements. Rather, they serve as a coach, setting the strategic goals for the “team”—which is made up of departments like engineering, procurement, and production. If the “game” is not going according to plan, it is the Material Compliance Manager’s responsibility to step in, make adjustments, and help realign the team and strategy to meet the defined compliance objectives.
[1] German Civil Code (BGB) § 433 (1): The seller is obligated to deliver the item free from material and legal defects.
[2] Regulation (EU) No. 1169/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2011 on the provision of food information to consumers, amending Regulations (EC) No. 1924/2006 and (EC) No. 1925/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council, and repealing Commission Directive 87/250/EEC, Council Directive 90/496/EEC, Commission Directive 1999/10/EC, Directive 2000/13/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, Commission Directives 2002/67/EC and 2008/5/EC, and Commission Regulation (EC) No. 608/2004.
[3] REACH-CLP-Biocides Helpdesk: National information office of the German Federal Government for REACH, CLP, and Biocides. Available online.
[4] IEC 63000:2016 – Technical documentation for the assessment of electrical and electronic products with respect to the restriction of hazardous substances. This international standard replaces DIN EN 50581 and specifies the technical documentation manufacturers must compile to demonstrate compliance with applicable substance restrictions. Available at: www.iec63000.com
[5] REACH – Regulation (EC) No. 1907/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), establishing a European Chemicals Agency, amending Directive 1999/45/EC and repealing Council Regulation (EEC) No. 793/93, Commission Regulation (EC) No. 1488/94, Council Directive 76/769/EEC, and Commission Directives 91/155/EEC, 93/67/EEC, 93/105/EC and 2000/21/EC.
[6] RoHS – Directive 2011/65/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2011 on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (RoHS II), repealing Directive 2002/95/EC (RoHS I).
This article was written by Markus Glauben and was first published in the magazine “Compliance Berater”.
You can access the full article (german) at: https://tec4u-solutions.com/download/fachartikel/CB_09-2018_Glauben.pdf
Additional information about certified training programs for Material Compliance Officers (TÜV) and Material Compliance Specialists (TÜV) is available through our Academy.